After installing the August 2026 preview updates on a Windows 11 25H2 machine, I noticed that the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line utility (WMIC) was no longer available. Microsoft says WMIC is being removed from Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 and will no longer be offered as an installable Feature on Demand, although WMI itself remains supported. I still have a few scripts that depend on WMIC and would prefer to keep the utility available if possible. Is there an official way to reinstall it, or would copying wmic.exe from another system work?
3 Answers
If you have older batch files, they will need to be converted rather than restored. Depending on the task, PowerShell commands such as Get-CimInstance can replace WMIC directly, and existing WMI-based scripts may only need their command syntax changed. Tools that still specifically launch wmic.exe should be treated as legacy and updated before deploying the newer Windows versions.
For most scripts, use PowerShell's Get-CimInstance. It queries the same underlying WMI infrastructure while using the supported replacement tooling. For example, to retrieve a computer's BIOS serial number: `(Get-CimInstance Win32_BIOS).SerialNumber`. WMI is still available; it is the old command-line wrapper that has been removed.
There isn't an official way to add WMIC back anymore. Microsoft has been deprecating it for years, and the newer Windows 11 releases no longer provide it as an optional component. Copying the executable may not be reliable because it could depend on other system components and isn't a supported configuration. The practical fix is to update the scripts to use PowerShell CIM commands or another supported WMI client.
The same approach works for other classes too. For example, `Get-CimInstance Win32_SystemEnclosure` can be used when the serial number is stored in the chassis information instead of the BIOS data.