Microsoft confirms WMIC will be completely removed from Windows 11 26H2, ending support for the decades-old command-line utility.
Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) is a utility that was bundled with Windows XP back in 2001, enabling IT admins to interact with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to manage different components of the PC's hardware and software ecosystem. We have often used it in our guides to check the PC's motherboard model and the product key. Microsoft announced its deprecation a few years back, and it has now formally confirmed that it is removing WMIC in the next feature update for Windows 11.
WMIC has been around for a couple of decades, but its relevance has slowly faded over the years as more advanced tools have shown up with similar or better functionality, such as PowerShell. Microsoft deprecated it in Windows Server back in 2016, followed by Windows 10 in 2021, and then disabled it by default in Windows 11. Although it was available as a Feature on Demand (FoD) despite being disabled on new installs of both Windows 10 and Windows 11, Microsoft made it clear that it would not be present in the next-gen version of Windows.
A couple of days ago, Microsoft rolled out Release Preview builds 26100.9267 and 26200.9267 are for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 Insiders, respectively, under KB5120998. Although it packs a long feature list, a note towards the end some may have missed confirmed that WMIC will not be included in Windows 11 after August 2026. Since this is a Release Preview build that will eventually be flighted in general availability channels as Windows 11 version 26H2, this confirms that WMIC will not be bundled in that version and won't be available as an FoD either.
It's likely that many IT admins and casual users relying on WMIC scripts have already moved away from the tool since Microsoft has been slowly deprecating it over the past decade. An obvious alternative is Windows PowerShell for WMI, but Microsoft also highlighted some other workarounds
here.
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