Providers in PowerShell present access to data that is not normally easily accessible. There are providers for the filesystem, registry, certificate store, and so on. Each provider arranges data so that it resembles a filesystem.
A longer description of Providers may be seen by viewing the about file:
Get-Help about_Providers
The list of providers available in the current PowerShell session may be viewed by running Get-PSProvider, as shown in the following example:
PS> Get-PSProvider
Name Capabilities Drives
---- ------------ ------
Registry ShouldProcess, Transactions {HKLM, HKCU}
Alias ShouldProcess {Alias}
Environment ShouldProcess {Env}
FileSystem Filter, ShouldProcess, Credentials {C, D}
Function ShouldProcess ...
