Is there a WMI Redistributable Package?

Question

I've been working on a project that accesses the WMI to get information about the software installed on a user's machine. We've been querying Win32_Product only to find that it doesn't exist in 64-bit versions of Windows because it's an "optional component".

I know there are a lot of really good alternatives to querying the WMI for this information, but I've got a bit of a vested interest in finding out how well this is going to work out.

What I want to know is if there's some kind of redistributable that can be packaged with our software to allow 64-bit users to get the WMI Installer Provider put onto their machines? Right now, they have to install it manually and the installation requires they have their Windows disc handy.

Edit:

You didn't mention for what OS, but the WMI Redistributable Components version 1.0 definitely exists.

For Operation System, we've been using .NET 3.5 so we need packages that will work on XP64 and 64bit versions of Windows Vista.

Answer 1

You didn't mention for what OS, but the WMI Redistributable Components version 1.0 definitely exists.

For Windows Server 2003, the WMI SDK and redistributables are part of the Server SDK

I believe that the same is true for the Server 2008 SDK

Answer 2

Wouldn't the normal approach for a Windows component be that the administrators of a set of servers use whatever their local software push technology (i.e. SMS) to ensure that component is installed? This is not that uncommon of a requirement for the remote management of servers via WMI.

By the way, the WMI Installer Provider is not provided in the Standard Edition of the server products, but it is in the Enterprise Edition. So, Windows 2003 Server will not have this installed by default, but Windows 2003 Server Enterprise (and DataCenter) will.

This answer does imply that you are putting the burden of installation back on your user base, but for Windows administrators this should not be any issue.