👉 Overview
👀 What ?
Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) is a command-line and scripting interface that simplifies the use of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and systems managed via WMI. WMIC provides a command-line interface to WMI. With WMIC, you can perform actions such as querying data, executing method calls, defining data, and changing system settings.
🧐 Why ?
WMIC is important because it allows administrators to interact with local and remote systems and obtain management data from these systems. It is a powerful tool that can help in solving many administrative tasks, such as system monitoring, troubleshooting, and automation. Its ability to gather information from remote systems makes it particularly valuable for managing larger networks, where manual data collection would be impractical or impossible.
⛏️ How ?
To use WMIC, open a command prompt and type 'wmic'. This will start the WMIC shell where you can enter commands directly. For example, to get a list of all running processes, you could type 'process list brief'. To exit the WMIC shell, simply type 'exit'. You can also use WMIC commands directly from the command prompt by prefixing the command with 'wmic'. For example, 'wmic process list brief'.
⏳ When ?
WMIC has been a part of Windows since Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. It has been included in all subsequent versions of Windows, although Microsoft has stated that WMIC is deprecated in Windows 10 and will be removed in a future version.
⚙️ Technical Explanations
WMIC works by using the WMI infrastructure to interact with local and remote systems. WMI is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. WMI is Microsoft's implementation of the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and Common Information Model (CIM) standards from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). WMIC provides a command-line interface to this data.