SWbemLocator

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide

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At the top of the WMI scripting library object model is the SWbemLocator object. SWbemLocator is used to establish an authenticated connection to a WMI namespace, much as the VBScript GetObject function and the WMI moniker "winmgmts:" are used to establish an authenticated connection to WMI. However, SWbemLocator is designed to address two specific scripting scenarios that cannot be performed using GetObject and the WMI moniker. You must use SWbemLocator if you need to:

• Provide user and password credentials to connect to WMI on a remote computer. The WMI moniker used with the GetObject function does not include a mechanism for specifying credentials. Most WMI activities (including all of those carried out on remote computers) require administrator rights. If you typically log on using a regular user account instead of an administrator account, you will not be able to perform most WMI tasks unless you run the script under alternate credentials.
• Connect to WMI if you are running a WMI script from within a Web page. You cannot use the GetObject function when running scripts embedded within an HTML page because Internet Explorer disallows the use of GetObject for security reasons.

In addition, you might want to use SWbemLocator to connect to WMI if you find the WMI connection string used with GetObject confusing or difficult.

You use CreateObject rather than GetObject to create a reference to SWbemLocator. To create the reference, you must pass the CreateObject function the SWbemLocator programmatic identifier (ProgID) "WbemScripting.SWbemLocator", as shown on line 2 in the following script sample. After you obtain a reference to an SWbemLocator object, you call the ConnectServer method to connect to WMI and obtain a reference to an SWbemServices object. This is demonstrated on line 3 of the following script.

strComputer = "." Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator") Set objSWbemServices = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2") Set colSWbemObjectSet = objSWbemServices.InstancesOf("Win32_Service") For Each objSWbemObject In colSWbemObjectSet     Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objSWbemObject.Name Next 

Lines 2 and 3 in the previous example are functionally identical to all of the GetObject examples you have seen thus far. ConnectServer is the only method provided by the SWbemLocator object.

To run a script under alternate credentials, include the user name and password as additional parameters passed to ConnectServer. For example, this script runs under the credentials of a user named kenmyer, with the password homerj.

strComputer = "atl-dc-01" Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator") Set objSWbemServices = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer _     (strComputer, "root\cimv2", "kenmyer", "homerj") Set colSWbemObjectSet = objSWbemServices.InstancesOf("Win32_Service") For Each objSWbemObject In colSWbemObjectSet     Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objSWbemObject.Name Next 

You can also use the Domain\User Name format to specify a user name. For example:

" fabrikam\kenmyer" 

WMI scripts that connect to the WMI service on the local computer always connect using the security context of the logged on user. You cannot use the SWbemLocator ConnectServer method to specify user and password credentials for a local connection.

You should avoid hard-coding passwords in scripts. Instead, you can use the WScript StdOut and StdIn properties to prompt for and retrieve the password just before it is needed. If you are running Windows XP Professional, you can mask password input by using the ScriptPW object.

For example, this script uses StdOut to prompt the user for the administrator password, and then uses StdIn to read the value typed by the user and assign it to the variable strPassword. Because this script uses StdIn and StdOut, it must be run under CScript.

strComputer = "atl-dc-01" Wscript.StdOut.Write "Please enter the administrator password: " strPassword = Wscript.StdIn.ReadLine Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator") Set objSWbemServices = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer _     (strComputer, "root\cimv2", "administrator", strPassword) Set colSWbemObjectSet = objSWbemServices.InstancesOf("Win32_Service") For Each objSWbemObject In colSWbemObjectSet     Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objSWbemObject.Name Next 

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