Pushing a hosted Registry File to Multiple Servers

Question

I have bunch of Servers I need to push this patch through. Normally I would load up a WSUS or equivalent. However I would like to get this working in a DSC enviroment. So I am testing scripts to put into place for this workflow.

PowerShell complains it cannot find folder.

    Copy-Item $HostedRegFile -Destination $newfile "unauthorized"

Apparently I am not passing credentials correctly. I have tried everything I can think of using sessions to not using sessions..

    $servers = Get-Content "d:\Powershell\Servers.txt" 
    $Session = New-PSSession -computername $servers -credential $MyCredential

    $HostedRegFile = "\\Contra2\D:\reg\Player2.reg"
    foreach ($server in $servers)
    {
        #$Session = New-PSSession -computername $server -credential $MyCredential
        $newfile = "\\$server\c$\Utils\"
        New-Item -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -ItemType directory -Path \\$server\C$\Utils\
        Copy-Item $HostedRegFile -Destination $newfile 
        Invoke-Command -computername $server -ScriptBlock {
            Start-Process -filepath "C:\windows\regedit.exe" -argumentlist "/s C:\Utils\Player2.reg"
             }
    }

What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way (there always is)?

Clayton · Answer 1 · 2017-07-27T20:29:43.007

$HostedRegFile appears to be a UNC path, but you have a colon in the path. You need to change D: to D$
The regedit fails because it prompts for UAC upon launch but you're not running with a GUI to acknowledge and allow that. To allow the the UAC launch add -verb runas to the Start-Process invocation.
If the end goal is to run via DSC, you will need to create some normal shares that computer accounts in the domain will have access to. Domain Computers do not have access to admin shares like D$ and C$.
To avoid regedit and UAC issues, use native powershell cmdLets: Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\XYZ -Name Color -Value Blue -Type String -Type can also be DWORD, QWORD, Binary, ExpandString
It also possible to push registry entries via GPO.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 02 '17 at 18:43

Here is what I ended up with.

Course UAC and WinRM had to be taken care of before this works.

$servers = Get-Content "d:\Powershell\Servers.txt" 
$HostedRegFile = "\\Contra2\D$\reg\Player2.reg"
    foreach ($server in $servers)
    {
        $Session = New-PSSession -computername $server -credential $MyCredential
        Copy-Item -Path "$RegFile" -Destination "C:\Utils\" -force -ToSession $session 
        Invoke-Command -session $session -ScriptBlock 
        {
            regedit /i /s C:\Utils\Player2.reg"
        }
    }

Pushing a hosted Registry File to Multiple Servers

2 Answers2