Detect WiFi/WLAN interface programmatically

[derniwi]

Hi,

I need to detect the WiFi / WLAN interface of a computer using WMI or something else. The only way I found is currently to use the WMI filter

CIMV2: SELECT Description, DeviceID, NetConnectionID FROM Win32_NetworkAdapter WHERE PhysicalAdapter=True

and use the result of the "Description" field to check against the registry values of

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\xxx\*MediaType

where xxx is a 4 digit value, i.e. "0007".

As far as I found out, *MediaType = 0x0 is used by LAN interfaces, the value of 0x10 is used by WiFi adapters.

Is this a good way? Could you please check this registry values, if someone have a different entry for *MediaType on the WLAN interface?

The reason for this is I have to disable the WLAN interface if a network cable is plugged into the LAN interface, and enable WiFi if the cable is disconnected.

Regards, Nils.

[CoffeeFiend]

I don't have a wifi card handy so I can't really do a whole lot. However, before resorting to crawling the registry by hand, I'd look at the AdapterTypeID property (or AdapterType; pretty much the same idea) of the Win32_NetworkAdapter WMI class first. Hopefully it would return 9 (or "Wireless") for WiFi NICs.

The rest is easy enough to accomplish if this works.