A. The Microsoft .NET family of OSs and Windows XP include WMIC, which provides a command-line interface directly into WMI. WMIC installs by default, but the OS doesn't configure the environment until you call the application for the first time. After the OS configures the WMIC environment, you'll see a WMIC prompt, where you can enter commands. For example, to check CPU information, you can type the following command (depending on your Windows version, some commands might not be available):

wmic:root\cli>cpu get addresswidth, caption, datawidth

On a 32-bit system, this command returned the following information:

AddressWidth  Caption                            DataWidth
32            x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3    32

On a 64-bit system, this command returned the following information:

AddressWidth  Caption                            DataWidth
64            ia64 Family 31 Model 1 Stepping 6  64

To exit WMIC, just type "exit" or "quit" (without the quotation marks). You can find more information about WMIC by searching the "Help and Support" link on the Start menu.