How To: (Almost) Everything In WMI via C# - Part 3: Hardware

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Introduction

This is the third article in the series of articles How To: (Almost) Everything In WMI via C#.

• Reference Part 1: WIN32_Registry
• Reference Part 2: WIN32_Process
• Reference Part 3: Hardware Property Aggregation

In this article, I'm going to introduce a simple framework that can be used to aggregate property values for any of the hundreds of classes in the WMI namespace. In the attached example, I have included 30+ hardware classes used for everything from enumerating properties on network client CDRom disk drives to USB Host Controllers. When it comes to probing machines on the network for very detailed hardware information, nothing on the street can compare with WMI.

In the previous additions, we focused on a way to provide the property values as well as executing WMI methods. In this article however, we are going to focus on the considerable wealth of knowledge we can obtain by the properties alone.

Included Classes

The following included classes will return a collection of all the properties and values. This only applies to single string attributes. If you're going to need to aggregate multistring[] attribute values, then you'll need to wrap that in addition. Noticeably absent from this class listing is Win32_Printer, which I have left out since it deserves its own article.

• Win32_BaseBoard: Mother board or System Board
• Win32_Battery: System Battery
• Win32_BIOS: System BIOS
• Win32_Bus: Physical System Bus
• Win32_CDROMDrive: System Optical Drives
• Win32_DiskDrive: System Disks
• Win32_DMAChannel: System DMA Channels
• Win32_Fan: System Fan
• Win32_FloppyController: System Floppy Controllers
• Win32_FloppyDrive: System Floppy Drives
• Win32_IDEController: System IDE Controllers
• Win32_IRQResource: System IRQ Resources
• Win32_Keyboard: System Keyboard
• Win32_MemoryDevice: System Memory
• Win32_NetworkAdapter: Network Adapters
• Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration: Adapter configuration
• Win32_OnBoardDevice: Common Devices built into the System board
• Win32_ParallelPort: The Parallel ports
• Win32_PCMCIAController: The PCMCIA Laptop bus
• Win32_PhysicalMedia: Storage Media such as tapes, etc.
• Win32_PhysicalMemory: The physical memory device
• Win32_PortConnector: Physical ports such as DB-25 pin male, PS/2, etc.
• Win32_Bus: Physical System Bus
• Win32_PortResource: I/O ports on a system
• Win32_POTSModem: Plain Old Telephone System Modem Devices
• Win32_Processor: Processor specifications
• Win32_SCSIController: System SCSI bus
• Win32_SerialPorts: Serial Ports
• Win32_SerialPortConfiguration: Port Configuration
• Win32_SoundDevice: Sound Devices
• Win32_SystemEnclosure: System Details
• Win32_TapeDrive: Physical Tape Drives
• Win32_TemperatureProbe: Heat Statistics
• Win32_UninterruptiblePowerSupply: UPS details
• Win32_USBController: USB Controller on a system
• Win32_USBHub: USB Hub
• Win32_VideoController: Physical Video Controller
• Win32_VoltageProbe: Voltage Statistics

Using the Attached Code

Methods (Local Machine or Remote Machine)

• GetPropertyValues() - Gets the WMI Class Properties values of the object

Instantiate the Local Provider

//Local Connection
Connection wmiConnection = new Connection(); 

Instantiate the Remote Provider

//Remote Connection
//Requires UserName, Password, Domain, and Machine Name
Connection wmiConnection = new Connection("neal.bailey",
                                          "3l!t3p@$$",
                                          "BAILEYSOFT",
                                          "192.168.2.100"); 

Using the Classes

Using the classes is very simple. You just create a new instance of the WMI connection and then send the connection object into the WMI class you want to use. All the classes have the single method GetPropertyValues().

Connection wmiConnection = new Connection(); //The local or remote connection object
Win32_Battery b = new Win32_Battery(wmiConnection); //Create the WMI Class you want

    foreach (string property in b.GetPropertyValues()) //enumerate the collection
    {
         Console.WriteLine(property);
    }

Extending To Add Your Own WMI Classes

This solution is a simple framework that anyone can use to add and remove the WMI classes they need to enumerate.

Step One: Find some classes you want from the Microsoft WMI SDK.

Step Two: Create a class with the same name as the WMI class (example Win32_Printer) and paste the following code into it:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace baileysoft.Wmi
{
    class Win32_Printer : IWMI //The class name is the ONLY part that changes
    {
        Connection WMIConnection;

        //The class name is the ONLY part that changes
        public Win32_Printer(Connection WMIConnection) 
        {
            this.WMIConnection = WMIConnection;
        }
        public IList{string} GetPropertyValues() //replace curly braces with <> 
        {
            string className = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(
                                  this.GetType().ToString(), "Win32_.*").Value;

            return WMIReader.GetPropertyValues(WMIConnection,
                                               "SELECT * FROM " + className,
                                               className);
        }
    }
}

Step Three: Create a new tag in the settings.xml file for your class and enter the properties you want to enumerate (those ones in the SDK). Refer to the settings.xml file for the existing examples.

Conclusion

The WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) provider is considerably slower than the native .NET classes and it may be easier to do this all with .NET classes but there are a lot of commercial solutions out there that do this exact same thing and surprise, surprise they use WMI for it. The included example solution demonstrates how to create a very powerful, extensible WMI hardware management solution.

History

• Submitted: 03 April, 2007
• Fixed formatting and grammar: 04 April, 2007