Rem: Getting Up to Speed on WMI

Where can I get the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) software development kit (SDK) for Windows XP? In addition, do you have any recommendations for reading material for getting up to speed on WMI?

Microsoft hasn't yet released an updated WMI SDK for XP. The current WMI SDK is still the WMI SDK for Windows 2000 (WMI 1.5), which you can download from http://download.microsoft.com/download/platformsdk/sdkx86/1.5/nt45/en-us/wmisdk.exe. You can run the WMI SDK for Win2K on XP, but some of the tools (e.g., WMI CIM Studio) will produce version-incompatibility warnings. My understanding is that you can safely ignore the warnings. Also be aware that if you connect to another XP computer remotely, you must change the authentication level from the default setting of Connection to Packet. You can change this level when you log on. In the WMI CIM Studio Login dialog box, click Options to expand the dialog box. In the Authentication level drop-down list, select Packet.

In addition to the WMI SDK, Microsoft released the WMI Extensions for Visual Studio .NET Server Explorer, which target WMI .NET (i.e., the System.Management namespace). You can download the WMI Extensions for Visual Studio .NET from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=31155.

For reading material, I recommend starting with the current WMI documentation, which is part of the November 2001 Platform SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmistart_5kth.asp?frame=true). In addition, you might want to check out