Question

I would like to be able to query the Exchange version installed on our user’s server. I understand that this can be done using WMI, but I’m having a hard time finding a simple explanation using Google. Any advice?

Answer 1

This should get you started:

string condition = "Vendor LIKE 'Microsoft%' AND Name = 'Exchange'";
string[] selectedProperties = new string[] { "Version" };
SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery("Win32_Product", condition, selectedProperties);

using (ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query))
using (ManagementObjectCollection products = searcher.Get())
    foreach (ManagementObject product in products)
    {
        string version = (string) product["Version"];

        // Do something with version...
    }

That searches for instances of the Win32_Product class where the Vendor property begins with "Microsoft" and the Name property is "Exchange", and retrieves the Version property. I don’t have access to an installation of Exchange to know what those values will actually be. Even better would be if you can determine what the ProductID property would be for Exchange so you can filter just based on that.

Note that not all installed applications are returned by Win32_Product (it seems to be mostly Microsoft applications and those with Windows Installer installers). So, for all I know Exchange is not one of these applications!