My Mr. Roboto tools and scripts often need WMI. If your servers and desktops are running Windows 2000 or later this is no big deal. However, if you are still running Windows NT4.0 servers, these scripts and tools will fail. However all is not lost. You can download and install the WMI core for NT4.0 from here.
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This will require a system reboot. Also, once installed, this update cannot be removed or uninstalled. Although I've never seen where it has caused a problem.
I’ll counter the ‘if you’re running Windows 2000 and up, no big deal’ claim – I recently got into a bind for an admin task that required renaming a local administrator password from a list of possible administrator/local group account names. Guess what? Win32_UserAccount doesn’t allow for ‘rename’ functionality in Windows 2000. Jeff, others – is there a catch-all list or chart for what WMI functions do not work in Windows 2000 (yes, I’m sure technet has it per class, but I’d prefer a good overview with less digging)? Thanks in advance – PS – cusrmgr.exe batch file helped out in a pinch.
I should have been clearer. WMI is installed by default on Windows 2000 and later systems. However, not all WMI installations are the same. With each new Windows version, WMI has been expanded. Even server apps like Exchange underwent a significant WMI upgrade from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003.
I’m not aware of a single source for all WMI classes. I usually check the documentation for a particular class on MSDN if I’m having an issue.
But you make me realize I should be more careful in my scripts that use WMI so that I let you know if there are any OS limitations.