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PowerShell providers are .NET programs that enables us to access

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and manage specialized Windows data stores.

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Now, when I say specialized data stores,

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it means data other than files,

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folders, and documents that resides on a hard drive or shared network path.

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Operating system data like Windows Registry, certificate stores play a

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significant role in managing OS‑related operations.

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PS providers provides a convenient way to access and manage this kind of data.

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PS providers enables this data to appear as if they are

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stored on a drive and access them just like you would access

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a file or a folder on a disk drive.

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The data in the provider drive can be managed by built‑in commands.

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The built‑in commands can also have custom parameters based on

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the type of provider that is being accessed.

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For example,

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while in the cert provider, which is the PS provider for accessing certificates,

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if you run Get‑Item command,

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you will see an additional parameter, CodeSigningCert. You won't see this

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parameter while accessing other provider data like registry or filesystem.

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We'll quickly switch to PowerShell console window and check these

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PowerShell providers. In this demo, we'll discover the default PowerShell

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providers that are available to us.

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I am in the PowerShell console window, and we'll quickly see PowerShell version.

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Here, we can see that the OS is Windows 10, and PowerShell

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Core version is 7.1.3. I'll clear the screen now. To get the

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list of PowerShell providers, I'll run get‑psprovider command.

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This will list all default providers that are available on the

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system. Here, you can see Drives property under which you can see PS drives associated with each provider.