Getting detail System Information without a DLLImport in dotNet

The two functions below can make getting information trivial because   it writes the information out into clean XML which may be examined by XPath or LINQ.

• The first function calls the second using a built in list of the WMI objects (this can take a long time to run and will produce a huge file: BE WARNED -- run it once to see what is available.)
• The second function writes a short list specified in a string array (for example: use a text file with one item per line). This is likely the most common use.
• If you are planning to write to a file, you may find encoding issues.

using System; 
using System.Collections.Generic; 
using System.Management; 
using System.Text; 
using System.IO; 
using System.Xml;

Everything in the Wmi

The following obtains the list of available objects (some 1200+ on my Windows 7 box) and then gets information about each

 

/// <summary> 
/// Enumerates all of the WMI classes on the local machine 
/// </summary> 
/// <returns>Array of WMI providers available</returns> 
public static string[] AvailableWmiClasses() 
{ 
    var queue =new Queue<string>(); 
    ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher( 
      new ManagementScope("root\\cimv2"), 
     new WqlObjectQuery("select * from meta_class"), 
     null); 

    foreach (ManagementClass wmiClass in searcher.Get()) 
    { 
        queue.Enqueue(wmiClass["__CLASS"].ToString());                
    } 
    return queue.ToArray(); 
} 
    
/// <summary> 
/// Get information about all WMI providers installed locally 
/// </summary> 
/// <returns>String containing information formatted as XML</returns> 
public static String GetFullWmi() 
{ 
    return GetWmi(AvailableWmiClasses()); 
}

 

The Core Routine

public static string GetWmi(string[] wmiObjects) 
{ 
    StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter(); 

    XmlTextWriter twriter = 
        new XmlTextWriter(stringWriter); 
    twriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented; 

    twriter.WriteStartDocument(); 
    twriter.WriteStartElement("wmiinformation"); 
    twriter.WriteAttributeString("start", DateTime.Now.ToString("s")); 
    foreach (var wmiObject in wmiObjects) 
        try 
        { 
            // next line may fail so we wrte Start Element only if it succeeds 
            DateTime start = DateTime.Now; 
            ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(String.Format("SELECT * FROM {0}", wmiObject)); 
            DateTime endquery = DateTime.Now; 
            twriter.WriteStartElement(wmiObject); 
            TimeSpan elapse = endquery - start; 
            twriter.WriteAttributeString("queryMsec", elapse.TotalMilliseconds.ToString()); 

            foreach (ManagementObject wmi in searcher.Get()) 
            { 
                twriter.WriteStartElement("item"); 
                foreach (var prop in wmi.Properties) 
                { 
                    if (prop.Value != null) 
                    { 
                        twriter.WriteStartElement("property"); 
                        switch (prop.Value.GetType().Name) 
                        { 
                            case "Boolean": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, (bool)prop.Value ? "true" : "false"); 
                                break; 
                            case "String": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, (string)prop.Value); 
                                break; 
                            case "UInt64": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "UInt32": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "UInt16": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "Int64": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "Int32": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "Int16": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "Double": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "Byte": 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                            case "UInt16[]": 
                                foreach (var x in (UInt16[])prop.Value) 
                                { 
                                    twriter.WriteElementString("item", x.ToString()); 
                                } 
                                break; 
                            case "String[]": 
                                foreach (var x in (String[])prop.Value) 
                                { 
                                    twriter.WriteElementString("item", x.ToString()); 
                                } 
                                break; 
                            case "Byte[]": 
                                foreach (var x in (Byte[])prop.Value) 
                                { 
                                    twriter.WriteElementString("item", x.ToString()); 
                                } 
                                break; 
                            default: 
                                twriter.WriteAttributeString(prop.Name, prop.Value.ToString()); 
                                break; 
                        } 

                    twriter.WriteEndElement(); 
                    } 
                } 
                twriter.WriteEndElement(); 
            }

            twriter.WriteEndElement(); 
        } 
        catch (Exception exc) 
        { 
            twriter.WriteElementString("Error", exc.Message); 

            twriter.WriteEndElement();  // Close the WmiObject Tag 
        } 
    twriter.WriteEndElement(); 
    twriter.WriteEndDocument(); 
    twriter.Close(); 
    return stringWriter.ToString(); 
}

 

Writing to a file with appropriate encoding

using (var output = new StreamWriter("systeminformation.xml",false,Encoding.Unicode)) 
{ 
      output.Write(wmiList == null ?  GetFullWmi() :  GetWmi(wmiList)); 
}