Collecting information about computers
This sample only applies to Windows platforms.
Cmdlets from CimCmdlets module are the most important cmdlets for general system management tasks. All critical subsystem settings are exposed through WMI. Furthermore, WMI treats data as objects that are in collections of one or more items. Because PowerShell also works with objects and has a pipeline that allows you to treat single or multiple objects in the same way, generic WMI access allows you to perform some advanced tasks with very little work.
Listing desktop settings
We'll begin with a command that collects information about the desktops on the local computer.
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Desktop
This returns information for all desktops, whether they're in use or not.
Note
Information returned by some WMI classes can be very detailed, and often include metadata about the WMI class.
Because most of these metadata properties have names that begin with Cim, you can filter the
properties using Select-Object. Specify the -ExcludeProperty parameter with "Cim*" as the
value. For example:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Desktop | Select-Object -ExcludeProperty "CIM*"
To filter out the metadata, use a pipeline operator (|) to send the results of the Get-CimInstance
command to Select-Object -ExcludeProperty "CIM*".
Listing BIOS Information
The WMI Win32_BIOS class returns fairly compact and complete information about the system BIOS on the local computer:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_BIOS
Listing Processor Information
You can retrieve general processor information by using WMI's Win32_Processor class, although you will likely want to filter the information:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Processor | Select-Object -ExcludeProperty "CIM*"
For a generic description string of the processor family, you can just return the SystemType property:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_ComputerSystem | Select-Object -Property SystemType
SystemType
----------
X86-based PC
Listing computer manufacturer and model
Computer model information is also available from Win32_ComputerSystem. The standard displayed output will not need any filtering to provide OEM data:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_ComputerSystem
Name PrimaryOwnerName Domain TotalPhysicalMemory Model Manufacturer
---- ---------------- ------ ------------------- ----- ------------
MyPC Jane Doe WORKGROUP 804765696 DA243A-ABA 6415cl NA910 Compaq Presario 06
Your output from commands such as this, which return information directly from some hardware, is only as good as the data you have. Some information isn't correctly configured by hardware manufacturers and may therefore be unavailable.
Listing installed hotfixes
You can list all installed hotfixes by using Win32_QuickFixEngineering:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_QuickFixEngineering
This class returns a list of hotfixes that looks like this:
Source Description HotFixID InstalledBy InstalledOn PSComputerName
------ ----------- -------- ----------- ----------- --------------
Security Update KB4048951 Administrator 12/16/2017 .
For more succinct output, you may want to exclude some properties. Although you can use the
Get-CimInstance's Property parameter to choose only the HotFixID, doing so will actually
return more information, because all the metadata is displayed by default:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_QuickFixEngineering -Property HotFixID
InstalledOn :
Caption :
Description :
InstallDate :
Name :
Status :
CSName :
FixComments :
HotFixID : KB4533002
InstalledBy :
ServicePackInEffect :
PSComputerName :
CimClass : root/cimv2:Win32_QuickFixEngineering
CimInstanceProperties : {Caption, Description, InstallDate, Name…}
CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties
...
The additional data is returned, because the Property parameter in Get-CimInstance restricts
the properties returned from WMI class instances, not the object returned to PowerShell. To reduce
the output, use Select-Object:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_QuickFixEngineering -Property HotFixId |
Select-Object -Property HotFixId
HotFixId
--------
KB4048951
Listing operating system version information
The Win32_OperatingSystem class properties include version and service pack information. You can explicitly select only these properties to get a version information summary from Win32_OperatingSystem:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem |
Select-Object -Property BuildNumber,BuildType,OSType,ServicePackMajorVersion,ServicePackMinorVersion
You can also use wildcards with the Property parameter. Because all the properties beginning with either Build or ServicePack are important to use here, we can shorten this to the following form:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem |
Select-Object -Property Build*,OSType,ServicePack*
BuildNumber : 18362
BuildType : Multiprocessor Free
OSType : 18
ServicePackMajorVersion : 0
ServicePackMinorVersion : 0
Listing local users and owner
General information about local users can be found with a selection of Win32_OperatingSystem class properties. You can explicitly select the properties to display like this:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem |
Select-Object -Property NumberOfLicensedUsers, NumberOfUsers, RegisteredUser
A more succinct version using wildcards is:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem | Select-Object -Property *user*
Getting available disk space
To see the disk space and free space for local drives, you can use the Win32_LogicalDisk class. You need to see only instances with a DriveType of 3, the value WMI uses for fixed hard disks.
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DriveType=3"
DeviceID DriveType ProviderName VolumeName Size FreeSpace PSComputerName
-------- --------- ------------ ---------- ---- --------- --------------
C: 3 Local Disk 203912880128 65541357568 .
Q: 3 New Volume 122934034432 44298250240 .
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DriveType=3" |
Measure-Object -Property FreeSpace,Size -Sum |
Select-Object -Property Property,Sum
Property Sum
-------- ---
FreeSpace 109839607808
Size 326846914560
Getting logon session information
You can get general information about logon sessions associated with users through the Win32_LogonSession WMI class:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogonSession
Getting the user logged on to a computer
You can display the user logged on to a particular computer system using Win32_ComputerSystem. This command returns only the user logged on to the system desktop:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_ComputerSystem -Property UserName
Getting local time from a computer
You can retrieve the current local time on a specific computer using the Win32_LocalTime WMI class.
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LocalTime
Day : 23
DayOfWeek : 1
Hour : 8
Milliseconds :
Minute : 52
Month : 12
Quarter : 4
Second : 55
WeekInMonth : 4
Year : 2019
PSComputerName :
Displaying service status
To view the status of all services on a specific computer, you can locally use the Get-Service
cmdlet. For remote systems, you can use the Win32_Service WMI class. If you also use
Select-Object to filter the results to Status, Name, and DisplayName, the output
format is almost identical to that from Get-Service:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Service |
Select-Object -Property Status,Name,DisplayName
To allow the complete display of names for services with long names, use the AutoSize and
Wrap parameters of Format-Table. These parameters optimize column width and allow long names
to wrap instead of being truncated:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Service |
Format-Table -Property Status, Name, DisplayName -AutoSize -Wrap
