Question

Consider domain of all windows based computers. from these computers i want to detect only windows server 2003 computers.

I have all machine names of all machines in domain. then how to determine OS version from machine name. I have used Environment.OSVersion to get os version of local computer. How can i obtain OS version of remote computer if i know remote computer name ?

Answer 1

You can use WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to access the remote computer’s
Win32_OperatingSystem class instance.

using (var mc = new ManagementClass(@"\\" + computerName + @"\root\cimv2:Win32_OperatingSystem"))
{
    foreach (var obj in mc.GetInstances())
    {
       if (((bool)obj.Properties["Primary"].Value))
       {
          int productType = (int)obj.Properties["ProductType"].Value;
          string version = obj.Properties["Version"].Value.ToString();
          bool isServer = (productType == 2 || productType == 3); // "Domain Controller" or "Server

          if (version == "5.2.3790" && isServer)
          {
             // "Caption" should contain something like "Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003..."
             // Please resist parsing that, however.                  
             Console.WriteLine(obj.Properties["Caption"].Value);
          }
       }
    }
 }

For details on the properties and what values are available, see the MSDN pages for the Win32_OperatingSystem class.