How to retrieve hardware info in c#?

Question

I want to export the result of command 'wmic bios get' to a xml file. How can I read these data and add each data as a xml node?

Answer 1

Something that actually had to do some time ago First you need class to handle requests by using wmi :

public class GetHW
    {
        public string identifier(string wmiClass, string wmiProperty, string wmiMustBeTrue)
        {
            string result = "";
            System.Management.ManagementClass mc = new System.Management.ManagementClass(wmiClass);
            System.Management.ManagementObjectCollection moc = mc.GetInstances();
            foreach (System.Management.ManagementObject mo in moc)
            {
                if (mo[wmiMustBeTrue].ToString() == "True")
                {
                    //Only get the first one
                    if (result == "")
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            result = mo[wmiProperty].ToString();
                            break;
                        }
                        catch
                        {
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            return result;
        }

       public string identifier(string wmiClass, string wmiProperty)
        {
            string result = "";
            System.Management.ManagementClass mc = new System.Management.ManagementClass(wmiClass);
            System.Management.ManagementObjectCollection moc = mc.GetInstances();
            foreach (System.Management.ManagementObject mo in moc)
            {
                //Only get the first one
                if (result == "")
                {
                    try
                    {
                        result = mo[wmiProperty].ToString();
                        break;
                    }
                    catch
                    {
                    }
                }
            }
            return result;
        }
    }

Then in your actual application query class like this :

GetHW HW = new GetHW();
Dictionary <string, string> data = new Dictionary<string,string();
data.Add("Manufacturer", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "Manufacturer"));
data.Add("SMBIOSBIOSVersion", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "SMBIOSBIOSVersion"));
data.Add("IdentificationCode", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "IdentificationCode"));
data.Add("SerialNumber", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "SerialNumber"));
data.Add("ReleaseDate", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "ReleaseDate"));
data.Add("Version", HW.identifier("Win32_BIOS", "Version"));

Then do whatever you want with dictionary. It might be overkill for bios data, but it will allow you to pull other data if you ever need to - e.g. motherboard :

data.Add("Model", HW.identifier("Win32_BaseBoard", "Model"));
data.Add("Manufacturer", HW.identifier("Win32_BaseBoard", "Manufacturer"));
data.Add("Name", HW.identifier("Win32_BaseBoard", "Name"));
data.Add("SerialNumber", HW.identifier("Win32_BaseBoard", "SerialNumber"));

or CPU

data.Add("Unique ID", HW.identifier("Win32_Processor", "UniqueId")); 
data.Add("ID", HW.identifier("Win32_Processor", "ProcessorId"));
data.Add("Name", HW.identifier("Win32_Processor", "Name"));
data.Add("Manufacturer", HW.identifier("Win32_Processor", "Manufacturer"));
data.Add("MaxClockSpeed", HW.identifier("Win32_Processor", "MaxClockSpeed"));

Edit : In case anyone ever need to - here is a a list of all win32 classes.