'wmic' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Question

I need to run this script I made. This batch should copy compiled program on STM32 Nucleo. It uses wmic to find Nucleo's virtual drive's letter by it's label:

@echo off
for /f %%D in ('wmic volume get DriveLetter^, Label ^| find "NODE_F446RE"') do set nucleo_drive=%%D
IF EXIST %D%\DETAILS.TXT (
  IF EXIST main.bin (
    @echo on
    xcopy main.bin %D%
    @echo off
    echo Copied main.bin on nucleo
  ) ELSE (
    echo Binary not found. Run `mingw32-make` in this directory to compile the project.
  )
) ELSE (
  echo Nucleo drive not found. If needed, edit the `find "NODE_F446RE"` part of this script to refference your nucleo volume name.
)

But I get this error:

'wmic' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

I ensured that Windows Management Instrumenation service is running. What else could be wrong?

Try absolute path to `wmic`, it should live in `C:\Windows\System32\wbem` — Alex, Feb 14 '17 at 13:20

Ben N · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-17T16:41:54.097

22

This indicates that the wmic utility's directory is not found on your PATH. Open the advanced System Properties window (you can open the System page with Windows+Pause/Break) and on the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables. In the section for system variables, find PATH (or any capitalization thereof). Add this entry to it:

%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem

Note that entries are delimited by semicolons.

edited Feb 17 '17 at 16:41

answered Feb 14 '17 at 17:26

Ben N

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+1 for a shortcut I didn't know about :) – DavidPostill Feb 15 '17 at 00:02
Before going through these steps, it's probably worth navigating to this folder in an elevated (run as admin) command-line window to ensure the command is really there. – FreeText Oct 01 '18 at 21:09

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '19 at 23:53

In my case, I had %SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem on the path already, but a recent USB device driver I installed additionally added C:\Windows\System32 to the end of my path, and this stopped Windows from finding the wmic command. When I removed the trailing C:\Windows\System32 from the path, wmic was found again.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 12 '20 at 01:07

0

When I was using C:\Windows\System32 in the path, I was getting the same warning while installing Tails operating system on an USB stick.

When I change this to: %SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem, everything gets sorted and the warning is gone.

edited May 12 '20 at 01:07

zx485

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answered May 10 '20 at 06:06

Abhijeet Kumar

1

David Wheatley · Answer 4 · 2021-12-03T11:10:21.357

0

If you're using Windows 11, Microsoft has removed WMIC from the latest Insider builds.

Instead, you should now use Powershell commands.

To list all WMI Powershell commands, you can run Get-Command -Noun WMI*.

edited Dec 03 '21 at 11:10

answered Dec 03 '21 at 00:43

David Wheatley

126
8

Well what commands specifically? – Tomáš Zato Dec 03 '21 at 09:19
@TomášZato-ReinstateMonica Run `Get-Command -Noun WMI*` to list all WMI-related Powershell commands. – David Wheatley Dec 03 '21 at 11:10

'wmic' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

4 Answers4