Recently, I was going through a blog which featured Belarc Advisor software to create the list of installed applications on Windows 10/8/7 so that you can install all those applications when you reinstall Windows. To be frank, I didn’t know about Belarc Advisor as I was using a built-in Windows feature which does my job without fail.
Last week, I blogged a guide similar to this which helps you generate list of running processes and services in .txt format. By following this guide you will be able to generate a text file which contains all the installed programs on your Windows machine.
If you are not in mood to install Belarc software, you can read on this small guide to create your entire installed applications list in .txt format.
Get a list of installed apps in Windows 7/8/10
Step 1: Open command prompt with admin rights. That is, type in cmd either in Start menu search box or in Run dialog box and hit Ctrl + Shift +Enter to open the command prompt with admin rights. Alternatively you can also go to All Programs > Accessories and right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
Step 2: Click continue button if you get User Account Control (UAC) Prompt.
Step 3: Here in the Command Prompt, type WMIC and hit enter. Once you type hit enter to see below message.
Step 4: Next, you need to type the following command and press Enter key to execute the same.
/output:C:\InstallList.txt product get name,version
Where “C” is the drive letter where Windows will store the installed applications list. You can also change the name of the output file and drive letter if you want to modify the output location. Also note that this trick should work in Windows 2000 & XP operating systems without problems.
However Belarc Advisor is also good as it creates a detailed list installed apps, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status and displays the results in your Web browser.
Selby Mahlangu says
it works.
thank you
Mari Viljoen says
It’s not working for me in Windows 7
wmic:root\cli>/output:C:\InstallList.txt product get name,version
\output:C:\IntallList.txt – Alias not found
wmic:root\cli>
Thanks!
Mari
Curtis says
It’s not working for me in Windows 10:
wmic:root\cli>/output:C:\InstallList.txt product get name,version
Invalid file name.
wmic:root\cli>
Thanks!
……….Curtis………..
admin says
@ Stan
Thanks for your suggestion. I am sure there are many users here who have installed CCleaner.
Stan Grabowski says
If you have CCleaner (free version), click on the Tools icon on the left side. It will come up with a list of programs that you can uninstall. On the lower right side of the screen is a “Save to text file…” button. Click on that and it will display a “Save As” dialog box so that you can select where to save the file to. The contents of the file are tab-delimited so I suggest opening the file with Microsoft Excel or something similar so that the data is readable.
Charley Rouse says
This will do a similar task, saving the Directory Listing into a text file at the Root of the C: Drive call “All_Progs.txt”
Start –> Run and Copy and Paste the following:
============
cmd /k cd && cd “C:Program Files” && DIR > “C:All_progs.txt”
=============
Explanation:
cmd : Windows CLI Command Prompt
/k : Do not prompt for input
CD : Change Directory
: Root Folder (C:)
&& : Join together Commands
CD : Change Directory
“C:Program Files” (Quote Marks are Required)
&& : Join together Commands
DIR: Create Driectory Listing
> : Output to
“C:All_progs.txt” : Location and name of output listing
Hope it Helps someone : )
Bill Dixon says
Is there any way to run this in batch mode? I’d like to put this into a script I wrote that collects system information like this (perl in my case, but a lot of people write batch scripts also)
Atif Mushtaq says
Thanks Man :) you rocks
Sean says
When using WMIC to create a list of installed apps it only shows the ones installed using MSI(Windows Installer). So some of the apps will not show up.
Chris says
bpara- You need to know the list of software that’s NOT on your PC anymore? Really???
I ran this on Win7 64bit and it worked great. Exactly what I was looking for!
bpara says
i need to know what are all uninstalled software since os was installed in particular pc.
sonylaptopfrank says
hello,
Doesn’t work on Windows seven 64, product get name replies: description = invalid class
i cannot start my windows 7 in safe more or use recovery function, what can i do ?
problem happened after windows 7 update, then after restart windows defender asked me to restart again, and then blue screen or auto restart forever.
i would like to disable or uninstall windows defender as i can access the command prompt but i can’t find how to do ?
And do you know how to uninstall windows latest update with command prompt ?
Thanks for help.
Mujeesh says
Thanks buddy…
Scotty says
Doesn’t list all the installed apps (only about 1/3).
Steve says
It works on my win7 x64 system.
@Alison:
I copied the list into excel and sorted the first column alphabetically.
remoki says
Don’t work for x64 system !!!
Allison Christiansen says
Is there a way to make the list alphabetical? Kinda hard to figure out if there’s anythign missing …
Davo Martinez says
I googled ‘list installed apps’ and came up to this page. I am using XP and noticed that the listing did not have all of my installed apps. I sorted the list and noticed that my 7-Zip was not listed, then I noticed that µTorrent was not listed as well. I thought maybe non-alphabetic characters were not displayed but then I also noticed another program called AP Guitar Tuner was not on the list either.