If you often use the good old classic WMIC tool, here is a bit of bad news. The Redmond software giant deprecated it in Windows 10 version 21H1, and even removed it from Dev versions of Windows 11. Microsoft points users to PowerShell instead of WMIC.
The official documentation now says the following:
The WMI command-line (WMIC) utility is deprecated as of Windows 10, version 21H1, and as of the 21H1 semi-annual channel release of Windows Server. This utility is superseded by Windows PowerShell for WMI. This deprecation applies only to the WMI command-line (WMIC) utility; Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) itself is not affected.
So from now, users have to utilize PowerShell. If you have never tried it, start with running the following command:
Get-Command -Noun WMI*
It will list all WMI cmdlets that exist in your version of PowerShell.
Speaking of Dev channel builds, the WMIC tool has been already removed from Windows 11 build 22483 or higher. If you rely on this console tool for scripts and some automation. All you need is to copy the wmic.exe file and its corresponding language resource file from the C:\Windows\System32\wbem folder. Get these two from Windows 11 build 22000, the initial release, or from Windows 10 20H2.
E.g. if you are running an English version of Windows 11, copy the c:\windows\system32\wbem\wmic.exe and c:\windows\system32\wbem\en-US\wmic.exe.mui from Windows 11 22000 to your current OS under the same location.
After that, you'll be able to use wmic as before.
If you are not familiar with WMIC, check out what it can do for you. For example, you can list installed printers, print out the drive SMART info, find the app installation date, and more, much more.
The information about the WMIC removal was first announced with the list of deprecated features on Windows 10 21H1. So there is no surprise that Microsoft has removed it from Windows 11.
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This is wrong on so many levels. PowerShell is difficult to use and its syntax is an end-user nightmare. Someone very incompetent is taking all the wrong and user-unfriendly decisions at Microsoft.
There goes the fastest way to get a device’s serial number
I installed Win10 21H1 fresh install and Win11 – wmic.exe is there and in path too.
I suspect it was just missing from dev builds to ensure no part of Windows was relying on it.
What a sad change
thanks for this news!
we rely on scripts run with the command line interface.
we just copied the wbem directory to an archive and will know what to do when we get screwed by microsoft again.
wheee!
-enjoy!
This is the last blog item available in the RSS channel, newer items are missing. Something broke in the integration, I guess.
Feedburner is out of order for some reason. I am in process of disintegration.
Hola.
Desde el 26 de octubre no recibo los artículos por e-mail.
¿Hay algún problema en el envío por correo electrónico? Gracias.
——————
Hello.
Since October 26 I have not received the articles by e-mail.
Is there a problem sending by email? Thanks.
Uhm, Get-Command or rather gcm -Noun *WMI* returns nothing in pwsh 7.
The command you want is Get-Disk it returns this
Number Friendly Name Serial Number HealthStatus OperationalStatus Total Size Partition Style
—— ————- ————- ———— —————– ——
4 Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250GB 7******4 Healthy Online 232.89 GB GPT
0 Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB S3*****A Healthy Online 465.76 GB GPT
3 TOSHIBA MK5065GSXN 8******0 Healthy Online 465.76 GB GPT
2 WDC WD1003FZEX-00K3CA0 WD-****Y Healthy Online 931.51 GB GPT
1 WDC WD5000AAKX-08ERMA0 WD-W*** Healthy Online 465.76 GB GPT
5 Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1 BC****AD9 Healthy Online 14.42 GB MBR
PS C:\Windows\System32\wbem>
I changed the output of my Disk serial #’s