local users and groups output to a file - file

Question

I have a script that shows all the local users and their associated groups. However, I'm trying to output the results into a text file and that's where the script goes wrong, because it's not giving me the same results I'm receiving from the output window. For example, the code I have reads:
$LogFile = Test-Path C:\Users\FredAslami\Downloads\Test.txt
$LocalUsers = [ADSI]"WinNT://$env:COMPUTERNAME"
if ($LogFile) {
$LocalUsers.Children | where {$_.SchemaClassName -eq 'user'} | Foreach-Object {
$groups = $_.Groups() | Foreach-Object {
$_.GetType().InvokeMember("Name", 'GetProperty', $null, $_, $null)
}
$_ | Select-Object #{n='UserName';e={$_.Name}},
#{n='Groups';e={$groups -join ';'}}
}
Write-Host "Got User Groups Info"
Out-File -FilePath C:\Users\FredAslami\Downloads\Test.txt `
-InputObject $LocalUsers -Append
Write-Host "Added info to text"
}
$LocalUsers.Dispose()
When I run that the text in the file will read
distinguishedName :
Path : WinNT://R68-CUSTOM-01
I have also tried using Add-Content, but that doesn't work either. It will add something like:
System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry
I also, tried to debug using Write-Host after it retrieves the local users and group info and another Write-Host after it writes the results into the text file and noticed that it's writing the results before it gathered all the info. So I tried using the Start-Sleep, and that didnt seem to work.

Answer 1

On the second line you have $LocalUsers = [ADSI]"WinNT://$env:COMPUTERNAME". You never assigned it a different value, so that's what you're seeing as your output.
I would recommend piping your Select-Object statement to Export-Csv. Much easier and cleaner.

Answer 2

You get different results in screen and file output, because you're doing different things with your data. The pipeline starting with $localUsers.Children builds a list of the user objects and their group memberships and echoes that to the screen, but you don't do anything else with that data. Instead you're writing the unmodified variable $localUsers to the output file.
If you want tabular data to go both to the console and a file, I'd suggest using Write-Host for the console output, and Export-Csv for the file output:
$LocalUsers.Children | where {$_.SchemaClassName -eq 'user'} | Foreach-Object {
$groups = $_.Groups() | Foreach-Object {
$_.GetType().InvokeMember('Name', 'GetProperty', $null, $_, $null)
}
$o = New-Object -Type PSObject -Property #{
'UserName' = $_.Name
'Groups' = $groups -join ';'
}
Write-Host $o
$o
} | Export-Csv 'C:\Users\FredAslami\Downloads\Test.txt' -NoType
If you want the output to go to the success output stream instead of the console, you could capture the result in a variable and output that in two different ways:
$users = $LocalUsers.Children | where {
$_.SchemaClassName -eq 'user'
} | Foreach-Object {
$groups = $_.Groups() | Foreach-Object {
$_.GetType().InvokeMember('Name', 'GetProperty', $null, $_, $null)
}
New-Object -Type PSObject -Property #{
'UserName' = $_.Name
'Groups' = $groups -join ';'
}
}
$users
$users | Export-Csv 'C:\Users\FredAslami\Downloads\Test.txt' -NoType