Play with WMI objects using python

Play with WMI objects using python

-          I started learning python few months ago; I must say it is an awesome language to learn.

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-          When it comes to system administration I worked on both Linux and windows, but that is not the point I want to discuss here!

-          When we talk about Windows related scripting, it is always about VBscript or PowerShell, so I decided to see what I should do in Python.

-          Of course, everyone will say: YOU CAN DO ANYTHING WITH PYTHON! I know that already so please calm down…

-          Just like PowerShell or VBscript, you can use WMI objects with Python to view or change some setting on your local or remote Server.

-          To Access WMI objects with python, first you need to download the “WMI 1.4.9” module in Python.

-          You can install this module using pip tool, or simply download it from this link : https://pypi.python.org/pypi/WMI/

-          To use pip, you can run this from the command Prompt: pip install wmi , if you already got this installed, you can upgrade it using this command : pip install wmi.

-          After installing the module, you can open an IDLE session and write: import wmi; , if you didn't get any error, that means it’s imported and working fine.

-          Now let’s get to the point, the script goes this way :

-          This small piece of code will simply show as the names of all active process currently on your PC.

-          Now what if we want to do some change, let’s say, we want to kill a process, we can do it this way :

-          You can see that with this minor change, instead of using “name” property, instead, we used a method called “Terminate()” to kill a process called "notepad.exe"

Notice: In these two examples i used python version 3.4, I guess all version starting from 3.0 and above should handle it normally.

you can find both scripts here :

Code1:

import wmi;

wmivar = wmi.WMI()

q = "select * from win32_process"

for a in wmivar.query(q):

    print(a.name)

Code2:

import wmi;

wmivar = wmi.WMI()

q = "select * from win32_process where name='notepad.exe'"

for a in wmivar.query(q):

    a.Terminate()

-          Hope this was useful, Happy scripting, hasta luego todos…