How to use wmic to quickly list all Windows processes [Tutorial]

When you are working on various important projects and performance is the keyword, it is essential to know exactly what processes are running in the background.

Especially if one or more of the above processes affects your current job, or you could just use the extra juice.

It's easy to find out exactly what's still running in the background on your device. You can get all the information you need in seconds using the wmic tool.

How about that, you ask? We'll show you this in this article so you can have this information handy for future reference.

How to use wmic to understand the background process?

There are actually many useful commands you can enter into the Command Prompt window, provided you open it with administrator rights, and these commands can provide valuable information.

With just a few key presses, you can learn about background processes and collect system information such as BIOS serial number, available RAM, and information about available partitions.

So without further ado, here is how you can get all the required information about all the processes running on your device.

1. Press the Windows key, search for Command Prompt and click Run as administrator.
2. To see a compact view of processes and their memory usage, type: tasklist
3. For a more detailed view of each individual process, Please type: wmic process list

When you request system information, remember to always open the command prompt with administrator privileges.

If you prefer PowerShell, you can get the same results as we showed above by entering the get-process command.

Why does wmic not list all programs?

You can't really show all programs that use wmic or make WMI calls unless all programs on the machine are Windows Installer (MSI) packages, which is somewhat rare.

You can almost say that the Uninstall key in the registry is the only place where everything is displayed. This is what the Programs and Features list in Control Panel uses to populate the All Programs list.

reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" /s | findstr /B ".*DisplayName"

That’s all you have to do, and as we said, all the information you need is just a few keystrokes and seconds away.

Since we are talking about wmic, other Windows users have reported dealing with access is denied and alias not found errors, so we have some fixes for you.

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