Expert Commentary: 2012 Scripting Games Advanced Event 9

re: Expert Commentary: 2012 Scripting Games Advanced Event 9

Jaap Brasser — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 05:50:28 GMT

The problem with counting the capacity values in win32_physicalmemory is that you might not only get the physicalmemory you are looking for as detailed in MSDN, msdn.microsoft.com/.../aa394347(v=vs.85).aspx

Here is an example on one of my computers, as you can see just counting capacity would not give you an accurate representation of the physical memory eg:

tag formfactor typedetail capacity

--- ---------- ---------- --------

Physical Memory 0 8 128 1073741824

Physical Memory 1 8 128 1073741824

Physical Memory 2 8 128 1073741824

Physical Memory 4 0 4096 4194304

re: Expert Commentary: 2012 Scripting Games Advanced Event 9

Cameron Wilson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:50:36 GMT

Hmm... I didn't think the adapter with "index 0" would be counted as the "primary" network adapter -- especially considering my active network adapter on my machine is actually #2. How I achieved the primary network adapter was to look at the binding order of the network adapters and choose the adapter with index 0 in the binding order.

re: Expert Commentary: 2012 Scripting Games Advanced Event 9

aml — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:41:26 GMT

Most of the examples I've seen use TotalPhysical memory from win32_computersystem to determine how much RAM is in the machine. But this is always slightly off.

The value in TotalPhysicalMemory is the physical memory minus the memory reserved for hardware; it's the memory the operating system has to use. (If you fire up resource monitor from within task manager and go to the memory tab, you'll see how much memory is assigned to hardware.)

A more accurate measure of memory is in win32_physicalmemory. You can get the machine's physical memory with something like:

$physicalMemory = 0

$wmiPhysicalMemory = Get-WMIObject -class win32_physicalmemory

$wmiPhysicalMemory | foreach-object{$physicalMemory += [int64]($_.Capacity)}

Most of the time the values are pretty similar, but it's nicer to have a value like 4GB for memory, instead of something 3.87GB. I used TotalPhysicalMemory as my fallback value, and used win32_physicalmemory as the preferred option.

re: Expert Commentary: 2012 Scripting Games Advanced Event 9

aml — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:31:35 GMT

Another approach is to look at the routing table, whichever NIC has the default route (0.0.0.0) has a good claim to being the primary NIC.

$defaultNICID = (get-wmiobject -class win32_ip4routetable |

where-object{$_.Destination -eq "0.0.0.0"}).interfaceindex

The interface index you get back matches the interface index used in win32_networkadapter and allows you to work out which has the default route.