I was looking through the list of deprecated Windows features to see if there was anything of interest added for Windows 11 24H2. My overall summary on that: no, not really. But you really should review that list yourself to make sure you aren’t affected by any of these.
Going through the full list, I was reminded that WMIC, a command-line tool that is used to make simple WMI queries, was supposed to be removed:
[Update – January 2024]: Currently, WMIC is a Feature on Demand (FoD) that’s preinstalled by default in Windows 11, versions 23H2 and 22H2. In the next release of Windows, the WMIC FoD will be disabled by default.
Well, that “next release of Windows” should be 24H2, so I checked a clean install of Windows 11 24H2 and it’s still there. So either 24H2 is not really “the next release of Windows” or someone forgot to flip the switch. Either way, it looks like it’s hanging around by default a little longer. But it will be going away at some point, so please switch over to using PowerShell for anything like this.
A few other quick status checks:
- WordPad is definitely gone (no way to bring it back).
- Problem Steps Recorder is still there (no way to remove it).
- VBScript is still there (but can be removed).
Another oddity: Azure Arc Setup is available as an optional component but isn’t installed by default.
Out of Office Hours 
4 responses to “WMIC: Not dead yet”
For Build 26100.712, it’s there but disabled by default now. Which is a problem if your imaging solution expects it to be available. The earlier Preview builds had it working out of the box.
LikeLike
Sigh. Of course they changed it. I guess whoever forgot remembered at the last minute.
LikeLike
Whenever you contact Microsoft support, you will be asked to record your steps via PSR to recreate the problem. So it would be more of a problem for Microsoft if they removed PSR than for us.
LikeLike
I’m sure they are aware of that, but still plan to remove it nonetheless.
LikeLike