Flexibly getting a list of printers for a computer on a domain-CodePudding

I am attempting to work on a script to call all printers including network printers for a computer on a domain. I first found how to do this for one computer:

$printerList = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Printer -ErrorAction Stop -ComputerName $env:COMPUTERNAME | Select-Object Name

Without including the environmental variable part '$env:' I was only able to get a list of local printers not any network/shared printers.

My specific issue came up when trying to have the -ComputerName parameter be another variable that was an expandable string. This is important since I will need the script to be able to take a user input and have the command run without them having to manually type it out. I would run something like this:

$a = '$env:' "$ComputerName" 

$printerList = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Printer -ErrorAction Stop -ComputerName $a | Select-Object Name

But then I get the error:

Get-CimInstance : The WS-Management service cannot process the request because port $ComputerName:port/wsman is invalid.
  ... Printers3 = Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Printer -ErrorAction Sto ...
                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-CimInstance], CimException
      FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimException,Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimCmdlets.GetCimInstanceCommand

Not sure what this means but it is strange that it works manually but not when trying to expand the string.

CodePudding user response：

Was able to successfully query the network printers using the invoke-command function to remote query the registry.

$scriptblock={
            Get-ChildItem Registry::\HKEY_Users | Select-Object -ExpandProperty
            PSChildName | ForEach-Object { Get-ChildItem Registry::\HKEY_Users\$_\Printers\Connections -Recurse -ea ignore | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name}
}                   

$printers = invoke-command -ScriptBlock $scriptblock -computername $computername