Getting Hardware Information using Visual Basic.NET and VBScript continued
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This article explains how to retrieve hardware information using both Visual Basic.NET and VBScript. In my previous article, I covered motherboards, onboard devices and processors. In this article, I concentrate on BIOS, BUS, motherboard, memory and audio related information.
A downloadable file for this article is available
here.
The sample downloadable solution (zip) was entirely developed using Visual Studio.NET 2003 Enterprise Architect on Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. But I am confident that it would work with other versions of Windows (which support .NET 1.1) as well.
I contributed several articles on WMI with VB.NET and VBScript (including the articles on introductory or basic topics of WMI). I even contributed a series (of about six articles) on “WMI Programming on VB.NET” covering several aspects of WMI. I strongly suggest you go through the series, before going through this article.
Listing the “BIOS” information
Some scenarios may require some properties of BIOS to be listed. We can retrieve this information dynamically using VB.NET. Before trying to retrieve the hardware information, let us create the wrapper with BIOS structure:
Public Sub addRow(ByRef dt As DataTable, ByVal p As String, ByVal
v As String)
Dim dr As DataRow
dr = dt.NewRow
dr("Property") = p
dr("Value") = v
dt.Rows.Add(dr)
End Sub
The above method “addRow” adds a single row based on the structure you create for the data table using the following method.
Public Function getStructure() As DataTable
Dim dt As New DataTable
dt.Columns.Add(New DataColumn("Property"))
dt.Columns.Add(New DataColumn("Value"))
Return dt
End Function
Once you complete the creation of wrapper, the following VB.NET code should support retrieval of some minimum information about the BIOS available on your system.
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e
As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Try
Dim searcher As New ManagementObjectSearcher( _
"root\CIMV2", _
"SELECT * FROM Win32_BIOS")
Dim dt As DataTable = globals.getStructure
For Each queryObj As ManagementObject In searcher.Get
()
If queryObj("BIOSVersion") Is Nothing Then
globals.addRow(dt,"BIOSVersion", queryObj
("BIOSVersion"))
Else
Dim arrBIOSVersion As String()
arrBIOSVersion = queryObj("BIOSVersion")
For Each arrValue As String In arrBIOSVersion
globals.addRow(dt, "BIOSVersion",
arrValue)
Next
End If
globals.addRow(dt, "CurrentLanguage", queryObj
("CurrentLanguage"))
globals.addRow(dt, "Description", queryObj
("Description"))
globals.addRow(dt, "Manufacturer", queryObj
("Manufacturer"))
globals.addRow(dt, "PrimaryBIOS", queryObj
("PrimaryBIOS"))
globals.addRow(dt, "ReleaseDate", queryObj
("ReleaseDate"))
Next
Me.DataGrid1.DataSource = dt
Catch err As ManagementException
MessageBox.Show("An error occurred while querying for
WMI data: " & err.Message)
End Try
End Sub
You can achieve the same thing with VBScript as follows:
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer &
"\root\CIMV2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _
"SELECT * FROM Win32_BIOS",,48)
For Each objItem in colItems
If isNull(objItem.BIOSVersion) Then
Wscript.Echo "BIOSVersion: "
Else
Wscript.Echo "BIOSVersion: " & Join(objItem.BIOSVersion,
",")
End If
Wscript.Echo "CurrentLanguage: " & objItem.CurrentLanguage
Wscript.Echo "Description: " & objItem.Description
Wscript.Echo "Manufacturer: " & objItem.Manufacturer
Wscript.Echo "PrimaryBIOS: " & objItem.PrimaryBIOS
Wscript.Echo "ReleaseDate: " & objItem.ReleaseDate
Next
