Cool Windows Command Line Tool

WMIC (Windows Management Instrument Command) is a nifty little Windows command that’s apparently been around since Windows XP pro. I found it when I was trying to get the command line arguments that were being passed to some process by some other process.

Some uses,

1.  To get the process list – wmic process list
2.  To get the group list – wmic group list
3.  To get the NIC Card Configuration – wmic nicconfig list
4.  To get user account list – wmic useraccount list
5.  To get the built in System account list – wmic sysaccount list
6.  To get the Environment list – wmic environment list
7.  To get the information of all shares (including hidden) – wmic share list
8.  To get the list of services – wmic services list
9.  To get the computer system details – wmic computersystem list
10. To get the volume information – wmic volume list
11. To get full startup list – wmic startup list full
12. To get Information of logical disks – wmic logicaldisk get description, filesystem, name, size
13. To get screensaver information – wmic desktop get screensaversecure, screensavertimeout
14. To get logon information – wmic logon get authenticationpackage
15. To get information about the OS – wmic os get name, servicepackmajorversion
16. To get information about QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) – wmic qfe get description,installedOn
17. To get information about the computer – wmic csproduct get name,vendor,identifyingNumber
18. To get the toal ram – wmic computersystem get TOTALPhysicalMemory,caption
19. To get the macaddress of nic card – wmic nic get macaddress,description

– source

You can format the output into html, xml, csv, and more. Just using it to pull info about your system is handy, but it can also modify network settings, start and kill processes, set the process priority,  and way more. I hate to sound like a late night Microsoft commercial, but this is the coolest command line utilities Ive found for quite some time in Windows. Go ahead and stick “wmic /?” in the command line and have fun.