• Using WMIC to determine whether Windows is running in a virtual machine

    /* Mitch Tulloch*/ /*">Mitch Tulloch*/ /*Mitch Tulloch*/ Posted On October 1, 2010
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    If you need to determine whether a particular instance of a Windows operating system is installed on a physical machine or a virtual machine, you can use the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) to do this provided you are dealing with a version of Windows that supports PowerShell. Here is a WMIC command that can determine whether Windows is installed in a virtual machine either Hyper-V, VMware or Xen:

    wmic bios get serialnumber, version

    For virtual machines running on Hyper-V, the version parameter will include the string VERSION.

    For virtual machines running on VMware, the serialnumber parameter will include the string VMware.

    For virtual machines running on Xen, the version parameter will include the string Xen.

    If you have feedback concerning this tip, please email me. And be sure to check out my website!

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    Author

    Mitch Tulloch

    Mitch Tulloch is Senior Editor of both WServerNews and FitITproNews and is a widely recognized expert on Windows Server and cloud technologies. He has written more than a thousand articles and has authored or been series editor for over 50 books for Microsoft Press and other publishers. Mitch has also been a twelve-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in the technical category of Cloud and Datacenter Management. He currently runs an IT content development business in Winnipeg, Canada.




    2 Comments

    Mark Havermans
    April 15, 2019 at 4:13 am
    Reply

    Hi Mitch,

    I have a question concerning the use of WMI-filtering for VM's in Virtualbox.
    As a teacher I would like to prohibit my students to use the external network (or even contacting the host on which the VM's are running)

    As you describe, you can use WMIC for VM's in Hyper-V, VMWare and Xen. But is this also possible for VM's in Virtualbox? If so, I could probably configure my VM's in Virtualbox as NAP-clients (I hope) to prohibit access to the physical network.

    I'm just trying to remember what I know from the time I was an MCT in networking trainings till 2013 so it's been a while... I would love to teach my students some basics about networking. So thanks for your reply and hopefully you have some good news for me.

    Kind regards,
    Mark Havermans
    Breda, Netherlands


      Mitch Tulloch
      April 15, 2019 at 8:36 am
      Reply

      Sorry don't know as I haven't used VirtualBox for years. Best to try and see what happens. You might also try posting your question to Oracle's VirtualBox forums here: https://forums.virtualbox.org/

      Good luck.

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