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Whats New in Windows�Vista

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Starting with Windows Vista, WMI contains many new features based upon requests by WMI users.

New Troubleshooting Tool

A new troubleshooting tool is available for download.

WMI Diagnosis Utility

This utility examines the current state of the WMI service and related components, DCOM settings, and registry settings on the local computer. The utility reports problems and offers suggestions for repair. For more information and to download the utility, see WMI Troubleshooting.

New Security Features in Windows Vista

The following list lists the new WMI security features that are available in Windows Vista.

Tracing and logging events

WMI service no longer uses most of the WMI Log Files. Instead it uses Event Tracing (ETW) and events are available through the Event Viewer UI or the Wevtutil command line tool. For more information, see Tracing WMI Activity.

Setting WMI namespace security in the MOF file

The NamespaceSecuritySDDL qualifier can be used to secure any namespace. For more information, see Setting Namespace Security When the Namespace is Created.

Security Auditing of WMI namespaces

WMI uses the namespace system access control lists (SACL) to audit namespace activity and report events to the Security event log. For more information, see Access to WMI Namespaces and Setting Namespace Security Descriptors.

Get and Set security descriptor methods for securable objects

New scriptable methods to get and set security descriptors have been added to Win32_Printer, Win32_Service, StdRegProv, Win32_DCOMApplicationSetting, and __SystemSecurity. For more information, see Changing Access Security on Securable Objects.

Manipulate Security Descriptors in scripts

The Win32_SecurityDescriptorHelper class has methods that allow scripts to convert binary security descriptors on securable objects to Win32_SecurityDescriptor objects or Security Descriptor Definition Language strings. For more information, see Changing Access Security on Securable Objects.

User Account Control

User Account Control (UAC) affects what WMI data is returned, remote access, and how scripts must be run. For more information, see User Account Control and WMI. For more information about UAC, see Getting Started with User Account Control on Windows Vista.

Other New Features in Windows Vista

The following list lists new WMI features that are available in Windows Vista.

New performance counter data providers

The AutoDiscovery/AutoPurge (ADAP) process no longer transfers performance counter objects into WMI performance classes in the WMI repository. For more information, see Performance Libraries and WMI. The WMIPerfClass Provider creates the WMI Performance Counter Classes. Data is dynamically supplied to these WMI performance classes by the WMIPerfInst Provider.

Indexer for collections

The SWbemObject.ItemIndex method returns the object associated with a specified index into a collection.

Support for IPv6 and IPv4

WMI IP Route Provider and network classes supply data for IPv4 addresses. Starting with Windows Vista, WMI also provides limited support for IPv6 network capabilities. For more information, see IPv6 and IPv4 Support in WMI.

Changes to remote connections

Connecting to a WMI namespace on a remote computer running Windows Vista may require changes to settings for Windows Firewall, User Account Control, or DCOM. For more information, see Connecting to WMI Remotely Starting with Vista.

Changes to Win32_QuickFixEngineering

For systems running on the Windows Vista and later operating system, this class returns only the updates supplied by Component Based Servicing (CBS). These updates are not listed in the registry. Updates supplied by Windows Installer (MSI) or the Windows Update are not returned by Win32_QuickFixEngineering.

Enabling and disabling a NIC

Win32_NetworkAdapter has new methods to enable and disable the network adapter.

Windows Installer Provider changes

Win32_Product has new properties and methods to provide more data about the product.

New display monitor classes

Monitor Display Classes contain data supplied by the WDM Provider that provides data about display monitors.

Intelligent Platform Management Interface provider

The WMI IPMI Provider supplies data from baseboard management controller (BMC) operations to the operating system. The provider supplies information to the Intelligent Platform Management Information Classes, which provide sensors data and BMC System Event Log (SEL) message data.

Detecting hyperthreading and multicore processors

Win32_ComputerSystem and Win32_Processor have new properties that enable you to write scripts to determine whether the computer system has multicore or hyperthreading processors.

Event messages

Windows Vista has new event messages. For more information, see WMI Events.

Inventory improvements

Many hardware classes have had changes to improve hardware inventory. For example, a serial number property was added to Win32_CDROMDrive and Win32_DiskDrive.

New provider hosting models

New provider hosting models have been added for Windows Vista. For more information, see Provider Hosting and Security.

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