Continuing to take advantage of using WMI to get data from workstations, another project recently came up to get an inventory of printers installed across my organization. It ended up being a pretty easy task using WMI through a startup script but the results could be tailored more by being selective about the results. Combined with formatting the output as a csv and later … [Read more...]
Merge multiple .txt files into a single file through the command line
When working with a lot of data and trying to massage it into usefulness, you never know what form the data will take. I recently wound up with a directory full of text files. In an effort to save some tediousness of the task, I looked for a way to merge all the files into one simple text file. With a single file, I could set to cleaning up the data using find and replace … [Read more...]
Creating a WinPE LiveCD for WMI lookups
I'm currently reconfiguring my organization's deployment server to use the DriverGroup001 variable instead of just using PnP matching for driver injection. We have had too many models interfering with each other. Bad drivers or just bad driver matches will lead to a BSoD or a buggy computer that requires more time troubleshooting or reimaging. The DriverGroup variable I'm … [Read more...]
Pizza Box, Lunch Box and other PC case form factors identified by WMI
One of the many classes I wasn't able to discuss in last week's post about WMI scripting is the Win32_SystemEnclosure class. It enables access to a number of properties regarding the computer's physical case. Things like depth, height, width, and weight all make perfect sense for properties you might like to know or use to determine if a policy should apply. There are plenty of … [Read more...]
Using scripts and WMI to ask a computer more about itself
When you sit down to a PC hoping to troubleshoot a problem, the more information you can have about it the better. Sometimes that means crawling under a desk, opening the case, or visiting various locations within Windows to find all the properties you are wanting. If you want to get fancy, you could write a script to get all your information from a single place. Of course, … [Read more...]