The Windows Management Instrumentation, or WMI, was introduced as a downloadable component with Windows 95 and NT. Windows 2000 had WMI preinstalled, and it has since become a core part of the operating system.

WMI can be used to access a huge amount of information about the computer system. This includes printers, device drivers, user accounts, ODBC, and so on; there are hundreds of classes to explore.

In this chapter, we will be covering the following topics:

• Working with WMI
• CIM cmdlets
• WMI cmdlets
• Permissions