Windows 7 Portable Command Guide: Understanding the Windows Management Instrumentation Command Line
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter provides information and commands concerning the following topics:
- Understanding wmic
- Configuring the firewall to allow wmic
- Running wmic
- Modifying the format with the /format switch
- Retrieving help from wmic
- Understanding aliases
- Using verbs
Understanding wmic
wmic is the command-line implementation of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). It extends WMI so that you can execute many WMI commands without a full understanding of the underlying details.
WMI is a group of technologies that allows different applications to interact with the Windows operating system. It is based on the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standard and it's a full-blown scripting tool. Administrators use WMI scripting to perform a wide variety of administrative tasks, and WMI scripting is included in many third-party vendor tools.
Some of the most valuable commands and switches are summarized in the following table.
|
Command |
Description |
wmic alias list brief
C:\>wmic alias list brief
|
Retrieves a list of all aliases. |
wmic aliasname list full
C:\>wmic computersystem list full
|
Retrieves a list of all properties and known values for any alias. |
wmic aliasname get /?
C:\>wmic computersystem get /?
|
Retrieves a list of properties for an alias, including the data type and available operations. |
wmic aliasname set /?
C:\>wmic computersystem set /?
|
Retrieves a list of properties for an alias that can be modified. The list includes the data type and available operations. |
/output: target
C:\>wmic /output:c:\data\cpu.txt computersystem list full
|
Redirects the output to a file. You can redirect the output to the Clipboard by using /output:clipboard. |
delete ( a process )
wmic process where (name = process-name )delete
C:\>wmic process where (name ='notepad.exe') delete
|
Deletes an instance of a running process. |