Getting Properties of All Win32_* WMI Objects in PowerShell

I ran across the need today to display all the properties of each Win32_* WMI object.  To cut to the chase, this is what worked (thanks to /\/\o\/\/) for a bit of help simplifying this:

 

gwmi -list | where {$_.__class -match "Win32"} |
    select @{n=’WmiName’;e={$_.name}} , 
           @{n=’Properties’;e={$_.psbase.properties}} |
    select WmiName -expand Properties | 
    format-table Name,Type -groupby WmiName

 

This results in output like this:

 

   WmiName: Win32_ComputerSystemEvent

Name                  Type
—-                  —-
MachineName         String
SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR  UInt8
TIME_CREATED        UInt64

   WmiName: Win32_ComputerShutdownEvent

Name                  Type
—-                  —-
MachineName         String
SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR  UInt8
TIME_CREATED        UInt64
Type                UInt32

   WmiName: Win32_SystemTrace

Name                  Type
—-                  —-
SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR  UInt8
TIME_CREATED        UInt64

The one basic trick here is that you need to access the raw ManagementClass object via the "psbase" property in order to access the "Properties" property.  The PSBase property is available on all .NET objects within PowerShell because PowerShell adapts all .NET objects to PowerShell by creating a wrapper object around the .NET object.