WMIC

WMIC, short for Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line, is a command-line interface to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) that enables administrators and scripts to query and manage information on local and remote Windows systems. It provides a text-based interface to WMI classes and objects, offering a simplified means to perform common management tasks without writing full code.

WMIC can enumerate and query WMI classes such as Win32_Process, Win32_Service, and Win32_OperatingSystem, and supports filtering with WMI Query Language. It allows remote access through options like /node, /user, and /password, and can operate within a specified WMI namespace. Output can be formatted for human readability or machine parsing via the /format option, which supports formats such as LIST and CSV among others.

Common uses include gathering system information, monitoring processes, checking service status, and performing basic management tasks from a command line or script. Examples include commands like: wmic cpu get name,NumberOfCores,MaxClockSpeed to display processor details; wmic service where "name='EventLog'" get state,startMode to check a service; and wmic process where "name='notepad.exe'" get ProcessId to locate a running process.

History and current status: WMIC was introduced with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as a convenient interface to WMI. In recent Windows releases, Microsoft has deprecated WMIC in favor of PowerShell-based tooling (such as Get-WmiObject and Get-CimInstance) and CIM-based remoting. WMIC remains available on some systems for backward compatibility but may be removed in a future Windows release.