from PowerShell 5.1 to 7.2.5 Get-Service -ComputerName doesn't exist anymore, how do I get computer name then?

Question

I'm using Get-Service to show a filtered list and it worked fine in 5.1. This is how it worked in 5.1 for me:

Get-Service -DisplayName $displayName -ComputerName $computers | Sort-Object MachineName | format-table Name,Status,DisplayName,Machinename –autosize 

However, in 7.2.5 -ComputerName is no longer there.

Answer 1

The -ComputerName parameters on purpose-specific cmdlets such as Get-Service, Get-Process and Restart-Computer only work in Windows PowerShell and aren't available in PowerShell (Core) 7+ anymore, because they are based on .NET Remoting, a form of remoting unrelated to PowerShell that has been declared obsolete and is therefore not part of .NET Core / .NET 5+, which PowerShell (Core) is based on.

Thus, switch to using PowerShell's WinRM-based remoting, where general-purpose remoting cmdlets such as Invoke-Command cmdlet facilitate execution of arbitrary commands remotely, using a modern, firewall-friendly transport.

• However, note that this requires all target computers to be set up for PowerShell remoting first, typically by running Enable-PSRemoting on the target machine with administrative privileges, though in server editions starting with Windows Server 2012 PowerShell remoting is enabled by default - see the docs.

• Once they are, they can also be used with the CIM cmdlets (e.g., Get-CimInstance), the successors to the obsolete, also Windows PowerShell-only WMI cmdlets (e.g., Get-WmiObject) - see this answer.

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Thus, assuming the target computers are set up for PowerShell remoting, the equivalent of your command is:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName $computers { 
  Get-Service -DisplayName $using:displayName 
} | 
  Sort-Object PSComputerName |
  Format-Table Name, Status, DisplayName, PSComputerName –AutoSize 

Note the use of the $using: scope to refer to the value of a variable from the caller's scope, and the use of the .PSComputerName property, which PowerShell's remoting infrastructure decorates all output objects with.