正在使用Powershell中的QueryHistory来查询远程计算机上的Windows更新

Question

before someone is thinking, hey this question is easy to answer (=> yes...) please keep on reading...

i know, we can get an instance of "Microsoft.Update.Session " from a remote machine with (for example) the following code

[activator]::CreateInstance([type]::GetTypeFromProgID("Microsoft.Update.Session",$ComputerName))

and this works for other actions like search for Updates that are installed IsInstalled = 0 .

To get a full list of all updates (also pending etc.) there are a lot of examples on the internet, even here on stackoverflow .

they all write to do the following

$Session = [activator]::CreateInstance([type]::GetTypeFromProgID("Microsoft.Update.Session",$ComputerName))
$Searcher = $Session.CreateUpdateSearcher()
$TotalUpdatesCount = $Searcher.GetTotalHistoryCount()
$TotalUpdates = $Searcher.QueryHistory(0, $TotalUpdatesCount)

And it seems that it is working because there is no error.... and we have a nice (big) list of Updates...

My problem is, the Result of QueryHistory(int, int) returns is always the same... no matter what $ComputerName i have entered at the CreateInstance(...GetTypeFromProgID(..., $ComputerName)) part

And no one on all the sites who are giving examples is mentioning this, i believe they all used the code locally because in that scope it is returning the correct values...

after investigating deeper and reading the MSDN i found the following statement on https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb394842(v=vs.85).aspx

Note that QueryHistory supports per-machine updates only.

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To sum um,

my Question is : Is it Possible to use QueryHistory in Powershell to get a list of Updates on a remote machine (without invoke... that requires PSRemoting... / or tools like psexec...) and if yes, how?

Answer 1

Same problem here. I still can't figure it out, but the last approach I came up with is:

1. Write a ps1 script with the code needed to run QueryHistory

2. write another ps1 script that creates a process on the remote machine using

    Invoke-WmiMethod -class Win32_process -name Create -ArgumentList $cmd_command_string -Computername $computerName -erroraction Stop -Credential $credential 

3. this is $cmd_command_string : it basically opens a cmd that fires a powershell

    $cmd_command_string="cmd /C powershell.exe -EncodedCommand " + $ps_command_stringEncoded + " >> C:\\Windows\\output.log" 

4. now write the code that reads the first ps1 you've written, puts it in a string and encodes it in base64 (that's what is $ps_command_stringEncoded in the code block above)
5. wait the process to end, then retrieve the output file.

Seems legit to me, but someway I can't make it work. If somebody wants to give it a try...

EDIT : I ended up copying a VBS script on the remote machine, calling QueryHistory from that script, writing output on file, retrieving that remote file back. Dirty, but it works.