I've seen numerous ways of retrieving installed programs on WinXP+ in python. What is the proper and most robust way of doing this?
Currently I'm accessing HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall
and reading each of the keys from there to get a list. (I've been told this isn't the proper way of doing things) I've seen examples of using WMI/Win32com to do this as well but have seen comments along with those implementations that WMI might be turned off on certain machines and that it's not a very reliable solution.
Is there a method which is both proper, and reliable to get a list of installed programs? None of the WMI examples I've seen have worked on this machine (hence my reluctance to use it, I'm only running WinFLP; which is a stripped vers of XP.)
I seem to have also found the TechNet article which my searches have turned up which is provided to a similar answer on my question: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/en-us/154dcae0-57a1-4c6e-8f9f-b215904485b7 Note that Vista/7 listed under Platforms very clearly says "Nope"...won't work. So the WMI deal seems like it's a no-go...
Being able to retrieve the installed path would be an upside as well, as right now my current code does not account for someone installing on another drive, or in a non-default directory.