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.