wmic is not recognized as an internal or external command – I was quite shocked to find that a command I use on a very regular basis was not working on a fresh installation of Windows 10 1909 on my trust old ThinkPad.

I don’t want to spend hours trying to find out why this was not correct in my system path, but instead, I fixed it and spent the time sharing how to fix the problem.

Adding WBEM to the Windows path

Adding the WMIC command to the Windows path is a very simple process (administrator privileges required) and is completed as follows:

Find the Advanced System Settings item in your start menu search:

Adding WMIC command to the Windows path View advanced system settings Open the Advanced tab and select the Environment Variables button:

Add WMIC command to the Windows path On the advanced tab, open Environment Variables Under System variables, highlight the Path variable and select the edit button:

Add WMIC command to the Windows path Select the Path system variable and Edit… Now we need to added the following line to our Path variable:

C:\Windows\System32\wbem\

We can do that as follows, ensuring to include the trailing backslash as this is a folder:

Add WMIC command to the Windows path Once you have clicked OK, closing all the windows we have opened so far, you need to REBOOT your computer to apply the change.

Once you have completed the reboot, open up the command prompt, and test the WMIC command:

Add WMIC command to the Windows path Learn more about this WMIC command from this link.