I wrote this article in Arabic too. Check it out here.
A simple way to get system information is through Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
WMI was firstly introduced as part of Windows 2000. It’s designed to help your system, applications, and networks.
WMI has amazing design; It’s implemented like a large database that contains several tables and types. And you can query it using SQL statements (really!).
.NET Framework includes various classes for dealing with WMI. These classes reside on assembly System.Management
that you can reference into your project.
Querying WMI is very simple. First, create a ManagementObjectSearcher
object that will hold the SQL query. Then you execute the query by calling the Get()
method of the ManagementObjectSearcher
object, returns a collection of ManagementObject
objects. This object looks like rows in a database that you can access its columns -PropertyData
objects- and retrieve its values.
In WMI tables are called classes, rows are called objects, and columns are called properties.
The following example demonstrates how to get Motherboard information like its name and serial number:
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher =
new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT Product, SerialNumber FROM Win32_BaseBoard");
ManagementObjectCollection information = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject obj in information)
{
foreach (PropertyData data in obj.Properties)
Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", data.Name, data.Value);
Console.WriteLine();
}
searcher.Dispose();
To read more about WMI and get lists of classes and features that it supports, see WMI Reference.
A long time ago, I used that mechanism to protect my application from copying it from a PC to another. The application asks the user for the serial number if he changed his PC (frankly, Motherboard). Did you validate? The serial number itself is an encrypted hash of the Motherboard serial number!
Posted in WMI Tagged: .NET, CodeProject, CSharp, WMI
Mohammad Elsheimy is a developer, trainer, and technical writer currently hired by one of the leading fintech companies in Middle East, as a technical lead.
Mohammad is a MCP, MCTS, MCPD, MCSA, MCSE, and MCT expertized in Microsoft technologies, data management, analytics, Azure and DevOps solutions. He is also a Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Quranic Readings college (Al-Azhar) graduate specialized in Quranic readings, Islamic legislation, and the Arabic language.
Mohammad was born in Egypt. He loves his machine and his code more than anything else!
Currently, Mohammad runs two blogs: "Just Like [a] Magic" (http://JustLikeAMagic.com) and "مع الدوت نت" (http://WithdDotNet.net), both dedicated for programming and Microsoft technologies.
You can reach Mohammad at elsheimy[at]live[dot]com