SysInternals Updater

I was just running a delightful batch script written by Jason Faulkner to update my SysInternals tools directory.

Sysinternals Updater

It was taking forever! At least 2 seconds per tool (regardless of state), and a huge chunk of time to download the current tool list. It seems to download everything, regardless of whether or not it's up-to-date.

I thought it may be far quicker in PowerShell with some more up to date methods, so I sketched this out. It's far less robust (won't attempt to kill processes if they're in use), as I actually don't want that functionality.

function Update-SysInternalsTools {
    begin {
        $localTools  = Get-ChildItem $localDirectory -Filter *.exe
        $onlineTools = Get-ChildItem '\\\tools' -Filter *.exe
    process {
        foreach ($tool in $localTools) {
            if ($tool.LastWriteTime -lt ($online = $onlineTools | ?{$_.Name -eq $tool.Name}).LastWriteTime) {
                Write-Verbose "[$($tool.Name)] requires updating..."
                try {
                    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $online.FullName -OutFile $tool.FullName -ErrorAction Stop
                catch {
                    Write-Warning "$($tool.Name) failed to update."

if ($MyInvocation.InvocationName -NE '.') {Update-SysInternalsTools}

I'll probably update the script shortly with kill-process-and-restart as an option (as well as a "download everything" argument, as it currently only updates tools that are present), but it seems to get through the listing far faster.

It's also currently just comparing LastWriteTime - it could actually grab the VersionInfo/FileVersion with Get-ItemProperty, but I thought that might add a very large chunk of (fairly unnecessary) delay. Will have to test it.