Windows Management Instrumentation Commands

In this article, we shall discuss Windows Management Instrumentation Commands. Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the Microsoft implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), which is an industry initiative to develop a standard technology for accessing management information in an enterprise environment. Please see how to Get a list of installed programs locally or remotely in Windows, how to query a list of installed programs in Windows, and how to Remote WMI Connection: How to enable or disable WMI Traffic Using Firewall UI.

WMI is part of Windows since Windows 2000. It is a service that can query almost every detail about a computer system. PowerShell ships with full WMI support. Here is an article displaying the steps to determine why an MBAM-protected device is non-compliant.

Common Information Model) cmdlets

These are the most important CIM (Common Information Model) cmdlets and are fully supported by PowerShell.

Cmdlets used in PowerShell	Description
Get-CimInstance	Gets instances of WMI classes. This is the most important cmdlet
Get-CimClass	Gets a WMI class. Use it to access static WMI methods.
Invoke-CimMethod	Runs a WMI method, and returns results.
Set-CimInstance	Writes back changed properties.
New-CimSession	Creates a new remoting session to one or more remote systems
New-CimSessionOption	Defines special options for remoting connections.
Remove-CimSession	Closes and removes a remoting session that is no longer used.
New-CimInstance	Creates a new instances of a WMI class, i.e. for temporary use.

Also, see how to Remote WMI Connection: Manage Traffic via Command Prompt, How to fix Get-CimInstance Access PermissionDenied, and how to use PowerShell to View and Change BIOS Settings.

WMI Commands – How to query information using WMI (Get-CimInstance)

To get information from WMI, you ask for instances of a given class. The PowerShell code for this is always the same, so the hardest part in WMI is to figure out the name of the class that describes what you are after.

1: BIOS

Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_BIOS

Or run

Get-CimInstance

<And enter the class name at the prompt>

Win32_BIOS

2. DISK – list logical disk information

Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk

or run

Get-CimInstance

<And enter the class name at the prompt>

Win32_LWin32_LogicalDisk

The WMI namespace root/cimv2 is the default namespace and contains classes for computer hardware and configuration.

root/cimv2 contains the following 276 classes:

The namespace root/cimv2 contains many more classes that may serve internal purposes (link classes to define relationships, abstract classes that serve as a template for inherited classes, etc. Take a look at the other class types.

I hope you found this blog post helpful on Windows Management Instrumentation Commands. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.