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Accepted
Henry
Asked: 2016-02-11 07:32:52 +0800 CST

Scan windows file system for directories containing certain words

  • 772

Is there a command that I can run on a windows Server 2008 r2 that will only show directories that contain a certain word.

For Example I want to find all directories that contain "logs"

That means it will return these all locations, since they contain the word "Logs"

C:\Logs
C:\stuff\ServerLogs
C:\example\Logsforapps
windows-server-2008-r2

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In cmd you can do a: dir /a:d /b /s C:\*logs*

    Or if you've a recent-ish PowerShell version

    Get-ChildItem -Directory -Path C: -Recurse -Filter *logs* | Select-Object FullName
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  2. Powershell can deliver what you're after with the following:

    gci -r c:\temp | where {$_.psIsContainer -eq $true -and $_.name -match "logs"} | foreach { $_.fullname }
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  3. Use the File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) tool built in to server 2008+ to query the servers in question for the files with the specific word.

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  4. How to find directories with 'log' in them.

    1. Open File Explorer
    2. From the Search upper right corner type keyword filetype:directory

    Example: log filetype:directory will return all directories with the word log in it. Remember to select the starting folder. Example: Documents search will return only what was found in the default documents folder. C:\Windows will return everything within the Windows folder. Selecting C:\ drive with Admin privileges should get you everything on the C: drive. If you have multiple drives select "Computer" then search keyword filetype:directory

    Updated with simple script.

        Dim objShell
    Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    objShell.Run ("explorer /root,""search-ms:query=logs&crumb=kind:=folder&crumb=location:&""") 
    Set objShell = Nothing

    The above will search all your internal and mapped drives in your explorer.exe view. The location: can be set if you need to check only select drives. It would look like 

        location:C:\

    You can repeat this for every target drive or folder path you need to search. 

        &crumb=location:C:\&crumb=location:F:\directory&crumb=location:G:\

    From my testing on 2008 R2 I found simply leaving the location without a target will search all physical and mapped drives. 

        &crumb=location:
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