Hi, Newbie here. I was laid off for a while and have really gotten rusty on my skills with Powershell which were in the fetus stage at that time. Anyway, I need to delete the contens of this registry key from 150 or so Win 7 boxes.

HKLM\SW\MS\Windows Defender\Signature Updates

I would like for the script to write to a CSV file for success or failure for each machine it touches.

I know this is a simple script, but can someone get me back in the game here?

Thanks!

The simplest way to delete a reg key would be by using reg.exe.

reg delete /?

You can delete registry keys remotely and store the results in a PowerShell variable, which can then be piped out to a CSV using Export-Csv.

Hi,

You may use PSRemoteRegistry module for this. It contain Remove-RegKey cmdlet.    

• Proposed as answer by jrv 16 hours 22 minutes ago

Hi,

You may use PSRemoteRegistry module for this. It contain Remove-RegKey cmdlet.    

• Proposed as answer by jrv Sunday, May 24, 2015 2:48 PM

Hi,

We could use Remove-Item -Path hkcu:\Software\_DeleteMe to delete registry keys. By default, remove-item have no output, but we could use $? to know whether the action was successed.

For more information, please also refer to the below links:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394600(v=vs.85).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd315270.aspx

Best Regards,

Yan Li

Thanks for the links Yan. I had an old script for removing a file and outputing the results to a TXT file. I used that script but modified it to remove the entries under the registry key that I need to delete.

Get-Content "C:\Removal\machines.txt" | % {Remove-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Dows Def\Signature Updates\*" -recurse -force
out-file -inputobject "Removed Files From $_" -append -filepath "C:\Removal\results.txt"}

It reports the entries as removed, but does nothing to the entries on the machine I am testing with. All help is appreciated.

Thanks!



Hi,

If we can not remove the item, there are also reports that indicates that "Removed Files Form computername", but this does not mean that the key was removed.

I would like suggest you run the below code in your computer:

Get-Content "C:\test\test.txt" | % {Remove-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\test\test"  -recurse  -Force 
 out-file -inputobject "Removed Files From $_ result: $?" -append  -FilePath "C:\test\results.txt"}

Please don't use \* at the end of the key path, we could delete the key by the directory path.

Best Regards,

Yan Li

I believe that Remove-Item cmdlet is not capable to delete reg key remotely. You can try following script to achieve goal.

Function DeleteRegistryKey($deleteKey)
 {
 $type = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryHive]::LocalMachine
 $Hive = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey($type, $RemoteMachine)
 $Key = $Hive.DeleteSubKey($deleteKey)
 }
 
DeleteRegistryKey HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Dows Def\Signature Updates

Hope this helps...!!!

Bhavik,

Script looks clean, but how would you pass $remotemachine information.

I tried below but didn't work

Function DeleteRegistryKey($deleteKey, $RemoteMachine)
 {
 $type = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryHive]::LocalMachine
 $Hive = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey($type, $RemoteMachine)
 $Key = $Hive.DeleteSubKey($deleteKey)
 }
 
Foreach ($srv in get-content C:\Servers.txt) {
DeleteRegistryKey $path, $srv

}

It is considered rude and is against forum policy to piggyback on another user's topic.  This topic has been closed for three years.

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None of the answers marked here are correct based on the original question which requires remote deletion.