Book Image

Getting Started with Powershell

Book Image

Getting Started with Powershell

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Getting Started with PowerShell
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Next Steps
Index

Retrieving objects with Get-WMIObject


If you know the name of a class and what namespace that class belongs to, it is simple to retrieve the class using the Get-WMIObject cmdlet. For instance, there is a class that describes the installed operating system called Win32_OperatingSystem contained in the default (root\CIMV2) namespace. To retrieve this class, either of these command-lines will work:

Get-WMIObject –class Win32_OperatingSystem
Get-WMIObject –class Win32_OperatingSystem –namespace root\CIMV2

The output here is formatted, so you will probably want to use Select-Object –property * to see all the properties. In this case, there are 73 properties, which are too many for a screenshot.

Tip

You try it!

Use Get-WMIObject with the Win32_OperatingSystem class and look through the properties. You might make a note of the properties that you think would be useful. As you use WMI (and CIM) more and more, you will find a number of classes and properties that you will come back to over and over...