Search for Directories/files/Folders

[Guest]

Thank you in advance for any and all assistance. I'm looking for a way to
programmatically scan all installed drives for programs that are installed.
Can someone point me to code to look for say, "keywords" on the installed
drives etc?

--
Michael Bragg, President
eSolTec, Inc.
a 501(C)(3) organization
MS Authorized MAR
looking for used laptops for developmentally disabled.

 

[rowe_newsgroups]

Here's a console app I just threw together that will run through and
list all exes that the program has access to. You should be able to
modify it to do what you need. Let me know if you need more help.

Thanks,

Seth Rowe


Module Module1

Sub Main()
ListAllExes("C:/")
Console.WriteLine("done")
Console.Read()
End Sub

Private Sub ListAllExes(ByVal path As String)
Try
' Change the "*.exe" to your search condition
Dim filenames() As String =
System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.exe")
For i As Int16 = 0 To filenames.Length - 1
Console.WriteLine(filenames(i))
Next
Dim directories() As String =
System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(path)
For i As Int16 = 0 To directories.Length - 1
ListAllExes(directories(i))
Next
Catch ex As Exception
' do nothing
End Try
End Sub

End Module

 

[Guest]

Seth,

Thank you for the demo console app. I'm looking to find particular programs
installed. Do you think I can modify this to find say all "symantec" programs
or "mcafee" ?
--
Michael Bragg, President
eSolTec, Inc.
a 501(C)(3) organization
MS Authorized MAR
looking for used laptops for developmentally disabled.

 

[rowe_newsgroups]

If they use a certain naming convention you could just search for that.

Thanks,

Seth Rowe

 

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hello Michael,

As Rowe has mentioned, you can use the System.IO's class to query and
search certain drives and directories on the machine. However, it is
important that you know tha keywords or naming convention of the programs
you want to search.

BTW, based on my experience, most program will add some configuration and
installation information in the system registry(under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE key). For example, the Adobe reader will add
information like InstallPath, version in its registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader

Mozilla firefox will add its exeutable's name and path through the
following keys:

PathToExe
Program Folder Path

Therefore, you can also consider performing search in windows system
registry for the certain program's installation information and then
perform further search upon file system. How do you think? Here are some
reference about registry accessing in .net:

http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_misc/userinterface/article.php/c103
09/

http://www.csharphelp.com/archives2/archive430.html


Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead



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[HKSHK]

Dear Mr. Bragg,

Seth,

Thank you for the demo console app. I'm looking to find particular programs
installed. Do you think I can modify this to find say all "symantec" programs
or "mcafee" ?

If you are looking for such (installed) programs, then perhaps it is
easier to check the registry. Maybe you find the path there
(HKLM\SOFTWARE\...). Getting the result from there should be much
quicker than scanning the hard drive. Of course, this won't help if you
need a list of ALL programs (no matter if installed or copied).

Best Regards,

HKSHK