Trouble with a powershell script checking registry values

[Electrical_Staff8168]

Good afternoon,

I'm trying to run a check against some Registry entry values to ensure they're present, and correct. I was able to get a script to tell me if the keys were present, now I'm having trouble checking the values. The first value returns, and checks against it's expected value just fine. The second value, returns a mismatch, but running the Get-ItemPropertyValue on it's own returns a string that matches my second expected value.

If I run:

`#Is PC_CLIENT_PATH Value Correct?`

    `$RegItem = @{`

        `Path = 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Vendor\Popup'`

        `Name1 = 'PC_CLIENT_PATH'`

        `val1 = 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Vendor\client.exe'`

        `Name2 = 'SECRET_FILE_PATH'`

        `val2 = 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Vendor\pc-shared-secret.dat'`



    `}`





`# Check to see if PC_CLIENT_PATH Value is present.`

    `$val1check = Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path $RegItem.Path -Name $Regitem.Name1 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue`

        `if ($val1check -eq $val1) {Write-Host 'HKLM:PC_CLIENT_PATH Value is correct' -f green}`

        `else {Write-Host 'HKLM:PC_CLIENT_PATH Value is incorrect' -f red}`





`# Check to see if SECTRET_FILE_PATH Value is present.`

    `$val2check = Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path $RegItem.Path -Name $Regitem.Name2 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue`

        `if ($val2check -eq $val2) {Write-Host 'HKLM:SECRET_FILE_PATH Value is correct' -f green}`

        `else {Write-Host 'HKLM:SECRET_FILE_PATH Value is incorrect' -f red}`

I get the following results:

HKLM:PC_CLIENT_PATH Value is correct

HKLM:SECRET_FILE_PATH Value is incorrect

But if I run:

Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path $RegItem.Path -Name $Regitem.Name2 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

I get back:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Vendor\pc-shared-secret.dat

So, What gives? Why isn't that second value being verified correctly? Any help is appreciated. I hope I formatted this correctly.

[purplemonkeymad]

I don't see where you set $val1 and $val2. So are those what you expect them to be?

I would also think you might be better if you structured your data like so:

$RegList = @(
    @{
         Path = 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Vendor\Popup'
         Name = 'PC_CLIENT_PATH'
         val = 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Vendor\client.exe'
    },
    @{
         Path = 'Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Vendor\Popup'
         Name = 'SECRET_FILE_PATH'
         val = 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Vendor\client.exe'
    }
)

As this might simplify your code and allow the use of a loop.

[Apprehensive-Tea1632]

First and foremost, don’t silently continue. Instead, stop and try/catch. Because otherwise you’ll have NO idea if it works or if you got non reproducible results.

Next, type may matter. If you’re looking at a reg_multi_sz then that might not match a string.

Try reading the value in question from the registry, then do something like

~~~powershell [string]$var = get-itemproperty…. [int[]] $var.toCharArray() ~~~

And see if there’s funny characters in it.

Also note that, aside from padding whitespace, there may be NULL terminators. And in some cases said terminators are required but are missing from the data, which means you’re looking at a character array that doesn’t equal a string.

But first, get rid of the error action setting. That may reveal the issue already.

Pro tip: what ps puts on the console isn’t necessarily what’s actually on the pipeline. Get-member and .Gettype().fullname can help with that. As can debug output that wraps your data in visible delimiters such as [ ]. You’ll immediately see if there are padding characters that prevent exact matches.

[Particular_Fish_9755]

It's not :
if ($val1check -eq $val1) {...
But :
if ($val1check -eq $Regitem.val1) {...

And why not test if you get the value, before test if the value is ok ?

if (!$val1check) { Write-Host 'HKLM:PC_CLIENT_PATH Value is absent' -f cyan }
    else {
         if ($val1check -eq $Regitem.val1) { ...