WMI and Hardware

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Overview

In this chapter, we develop a program that is based on the WMI class, or the Windows Management Instrumentation. WMI is an industry initiative to develop a standardized technology for accessing management information in enterprise environments. This information includes the state of system memory, inventories of currently installed client applications, and various other pieces of data (see Figure 23.1). Hardware information, especially when dealing with devices that are often on battery power like a Tablet PC, can be important to a developer. This chapter goes hand in hand with Chapter 24, Power Management for the Tablet PC, which details the power management capabilities that we can access.

Figure 23.1: Our finished application with information displayed.

  Note 

The source code for the projects are located on the CD-ROM in the PROJECTS folder. You can either type them in as you go or you can copy the projects from the CD-ROM to your hard drive for editing.

Project Overview

In this project, we take advantage of the WMI classes that are included in VB .NET to build an application that lists the various components and information about your PC. Our application will include the following information, but as you'll see, there is much more that can be included by making a few simple changes to this program.

Here is the information we're going to display:

You can see that this program would be quite useful for troubleshooting information or simply to retrieve information from a system. This information could be used for copy protection code by retrieving a serial number and then writing a key generation program to generate a single valid key based on this number. You could also use this in an About Box to give the user details about their system. Additionally, you could use this to help determine if a keyboard or external mouse was connected to a Tablet PC. Suffice it to say, there are many ways in which you could put this information to good use.

Getting Started

This application will consist of a very simple user interface. We could just as easily have used a Console application template for this project, although we use a Windows Form template. This allows us much more flexibility if we want to add the ability to e-mail this information to someone or want to expand this program at a later date to include more information. Additionally, we could simply use this in another application as an About Box or a troubleshooting screen.

This first step is to create a Windows Forms application by starting VB .NET and then choosing the Windows Form template. This displays the default form like the one seen in Figure 23.2.

Figure 23.2: The default form in VB .NET.

Next, change the properties of the form as follows:

Size: 500,500

Text: System Information

You should see these changes instantly in the IDE (see Figure 23.3).

Figure 23.3: The form is changed instantly in the IDE.

Next, add a ListBox control to the form. This control will be utilized to store all of the information about the PC, including BIOS, Network, and System. You can add it to the form and then make these changes to it:

Size: 450,450

Location: 10,10

Your form should now look like Figure 23.4.

Figure 23.4: The form is now finished.

  Note 

You'll notice that we left the Form1 and ListBox1 names intact. If we had been creating an application that contained more items in its user interface, we probably would have changed these names to reflect their purpose. However, because this only contained a single form and a single control, it wasn't really necessary for our purposes.

Writing Some Code

The next step is to begin writing some code for the application. You can double-click the form to display the Code Editor. Next, add a reference to System.Management and an Imports statement, which is the first line of code in the application and should appear before any other code. The line imports System.Management into the application. Here is the code:

Imports System.Management

You can add the Imports statement to the Code Editor, which should contain something similar to the following code after you have added it:

Imports System.Management Public Class Form1 : Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form : Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load : End Sub End Class

WMI References

Before we move on, let's take a look at some of the things we can accomplish with WMI and VB .NET. The following list of class names gives you an idea of the various classes that are exposed:

A thorough list of the classes follows:

Win32_ComputerSystem class: Allows access to information about Windows PCs; has several domain roles:

0: Standalone workstation

1: Member workstation

2: Standalone server

3: Member server

4: Backup domain controller

5: Primary domain controller

Using the Classes

Now that you have an idea of the classes that we can utilize, we're going to put them to use in this application. Specifically, we're going to use NetworkAdapterConfiguration, BIOS, and ComputerSystem.

Let's begin with a simple property of the ListBox control. We are going to be placing a great deal of information in it, so we'll need to have scroll bars. Let's use the ScrollAlwaysVisible property:

ListBox1.ScrollAlwaysVisible = True

You can add this line to the Form_Load event, which should now look like the following code:

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load ListBox1.ScrollAlwaysVisible = True End Sub

The next step is to create some variables for the ManagementClass and ManagementObject. These are both part of System.Management namespace that we imported earlier. Here is the code:

Dim mc As Management Class Dim mo As ManagementObject

Next, we assign mc equal to a new ManagementClass. The ManagementClass in this case is the Network Adapter Configuration ("Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration"). We can also set moc equal to a ManagementObjectCollection. Here is the code for those lines:

mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration") Dim moc As ManagementObjectCollection = mc.GetInstances()

Now, it's time to begin sending information to the listbox. We begin with a couple of lines that will be used to send some basic text information to the listbox. We use its Add method as follows:

ListBox1.Items.Add("Network Information") ListBox1.Items.Add("------------------------------------------------")

This information will be used so that the user can quickly look through the listbox to see the information they are looking for. The next step is to use a For Each loop, which is used to repeat a group of statements for each element in an array or, for our particular needs, a collection. We then check to see if IPEnabled is True. If so, we then output the MAC Address and Description properties of the network adapter.

Here is the code:

For Each mo In moc If mo.Item("IPEnabled") = True Then ListBox1.Items.Add("MAC address : " & mo.Item("MacAddress").ToString()) ListBox1.Items.Add("Description : " & mo.Item("Description").ToString()) End If Next

At this point, we have the network card information, so we add a couple of blank lines to the listbox to help separate the areas. Here is the code for those lines:

ListBox1.Items.Add("") ListBox1.Items.Add("")

Now, we turn our attention to the BIOS. This information is obtained through the "Win32_BIOS" management class. We set mc and moc similarly to the earlier step:

mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_BIOS") moc = mc.GetInstances()

Again, we use a For Each loop to repeat the code necessary to add the information to the listbox. This time, we use a With statement so that we don't have to type ListBox1.Items for every line in this code. Instead, we can use a With statement to shorten this up. Here is the code:

For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("BIOS Information") .Add("----------------------------------------------") .Add("Name : " & mo.Item("Name").ToString()) .Add("Serial Number : " & mo.Item("SerialNumber").ToString()) .Add("Manufacturer : " & mo.Item("Manufacturer").ToString()) .Add("Status : " & mo.Item("Status").ToString()) .Add("Release Date : " & mo.Item("ReleaseDate").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSBIOSVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Major Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSMajorVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Minor Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSMinorVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Present : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSPresent").ToString()) .Add("Software Element ID : " & mo.Item("SoftwareElementID").ToString()) .Add("Software Element State : " & mo.Item("SoftwareElementState").ToString()) .Add("Version : " & mo.Item("Version").ToString()) .Add("Current Lang. : " & mo.Item("CurrentLanguage").ToString()) .Add("") .Add("") End With Next

We now repeat the same process with the ComputerSystem, Processor, and Pointing Device management classes. Here is the code:

mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_ComputerSystem") moc = mc.GetInstances() For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("Computer System") .Add("-------------------------------------------------") .Add("Caption : " & mo.Item("Caption").ToString()) .Add("Primary Owner Name : " & mo.Item("PrimaryOwnerName").ToString()) .Add("Domain : " & mo.Item("Domain").ToString()) .Add("Domain Role : " & mo.Item("DomainRole").ToString()) .Add("Manufacturer : " & mo.Item("Manufacturer").ToString()) .Add("Model : " & mo.Item("Model").ToString()) .Add("Number Processors : " & mo.Item("NumberofProcessors").ToString()) .Add("System Types : " & mo.Item("SystemType").ToString()) .Add("System Startup Delay : " & mo.Item("SystemStartupDelay").ToString()) .Add("Physical Memory : " & mo.Item("TotalPhysicalMemory").ToString()) End With Next 'Processor Info mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_Processor") moc = mc.GetInstances() For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("Processor") .Add("-----------------------------------------------") .Add("CPU Name: " & mo.Item("Name").ToString()) .Add("CPU Voltage Caps : " & mo.Item("VoltageCaps").ToString()) .Add("L2 Cache : " & mo.Item("L2CacheSize").ToString()) .Add("Current Clock Speed : " & mo.Item("CurrentClockSpeed").ToString()) .Add("CPU Status : " & mo.Item("CpuStatus").ToString()) .Add("") .Add("") End With Next 'Pointing Device mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_PointingDevice") moc = mc.GetInstances() For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("Pointing Device") .Add("-----------------------------------------------") .Add("Device ID: " & mo.Item("DeviceID").ToString()) .Add("Type : " & mo.Item("PointingType").ToString())

.Add("Manufacturer: " & mo.Item("Manufacturer").ToString())

.Add("Number of Buttons: " & mo.Item("NumberOfButtons").ToString()) .Add("Status: " & mo.Item("Status").ToString()) .Add("Caption : " & mo.Item("Caption").ToString()) .Add("") .Add("") End With Next

Testing the Application

At this time, you can test the application by pressing F5, choosing Start from the Debug menu, or clicking the Start button in the IDE. Regardless of your choice, your application opens and should look similar to Figure 23.5.

Figure 23.5: The application with information displayed about the PC.

Final Code Listing

This is the final code listing for the application:

Imports System.Management Public Class Form1 Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load ListBox1.ScrollAlwaysVisible = True 'System.Management Dim mc As ManagementClass Dim mo As ManagementObject 'Network Info mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration") Dim moc As ManagementObjectCollection = mc.GetInstances() ListBox1.Items.Add("Network Information") ListBox1.Items.Add("------------------------------------------------") For Each mo In moc If mo.Item("IPEnabled") = True Then ListBox1.Items.Add("MAC address : " & mo.Item("MacAddress").ToString()) ListBox1.Items.Add("Description : " & mo.Item("Description").ToString()) End If Next ListBox1.Items.Add("") ListBox1.Items.Add("") 'BIOS Info mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_BIOS") moc = mc.GetInstances() For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("BIOS Information") .Add("----------------------------------------------") .Add("Name : " & mo.Item("Name").ToString()) .Add("Serial Number : " & mo.Item("SerialNumber").ToString()) .Add("Manufacturer : " & mo.Item("Manufacturer").ToString()) .Add("Status : " & mo.Item("Status").ToString()) .Add("Release Date : " & mo.Item("ReleaseDate").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSBIOSVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Major Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSMajorVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Minor Version : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSMinorVersion").ToString()) .Add("SMBIOS Present : " & mo.Item("SMBIOSPresent").ToString()) .Add("Software Element ID : " & mo.Item("SoftwareElementID").ToString()) .Add("Software Element State : " & mo.Item("SoftwareElementState").ToString()) .Add("Version : " & mo.Item("Version").ToString()) .Add("Current Lang. : " & mo.Item("CurrentLanguage").ToString()) .Add("") .Add("") End With Next 'Computer Info mc = New ManagementClass("Win32_ComputerSystem") moc = mc.GetInstances() For Each mo In moc With ListBox1.Items .Add("Computer System") .Add("-------------------------------------------------") .Add("Caption : " & mo.Item("Caption").ToString()) .Add("Primary Owner Name : " & mo.Item("PrimaryOwnerName").ToString()) .Add("Domain : " & mo.Item("Domain").ToString()) .Add("Domain Role : " & mo.Item("DomainRole").ToString()) .Add("Manufacturer : " & mo.Item("Manufacturer").ToString()) .Add("Model : " & mo.Item("Model").ToString()) .Add("Number Processors : " & mo.Item("NumberofProcessors").ToString()) .Add("System Types : " & mo.Item("SystemType").ToString()) .Add("System Startup Delay : " & mo.Item("SystemStartupDelay").ToString()) .Add("Physical Memory : " & mo.Item("TotalPhysicalMemory").ToString()) End With Next End Sub End Class

Summary

In this chapter, we built a very useful application that can be customized for your particular needs. It would be excellent to include with another project for an About Box or a Troubleshooting Guide. There were several new things we touched on in this example, including a ListBox control, the With statement, a For Each loop, and obviously the WMI. In Chapter 24, Power Management for the Tablet PC, we build a directory browser using the TreeView control.

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