Dear Monks,
I am writing a script which can scan Software & Hardware Assets from any Windows Machines. I am able to complete first part, where I get information of latest installed Software assets from "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\UNINSTALL". My script is scanning and making a list of these Assets.
As far as second part is concerned, I am Not able to find any location on Registry where I can get latest Hardware information available. I have gone through few tutorials on web and found (with some research) that "\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\" will provide hardware status. However it is also showing old Hardware status and it is difficult to separate old Vs latest Hardware status. For e.g. (on my PC) "\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}" (Where Default: Value is "Mice and other pointing Devices") is showing 5 Mice, under 5 subkeys (0000,0001,0002,0003,0004). Of course I use only 1 mouse:-)

Can somebody guide as where I can get good information about "Windows latest Hardware status".

Regards,
Sandeep
Update: I have gone through
Description of the Microsoft Windows registry.
Windows registry
Registry Guide for Windows
and lot many stuff on web. All these tutorials give overview of the Registry. None of them provides nuts-n-bolts kind of view. If anyone knows any Book/site which can provide such view on "Hardware section" specifically then please let me know.

2006-06-16 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines

( keep:0 edit:18 reap:2 )

Original title: 'Win Registry question'

Update 2: I got the answer through a newsgroup. The answer is WMI. Curious monks can check
1) WMI
2) WMI Examples

In reply to (OT) Win Registry question by sanPerl

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