{"id":4088,"date":"2013-03-01T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2013\/03\/01\/use-powershell-to-explore-windows-audio-drivers\/"},"modified":"2013-03-01T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:01:00","slug":"use-powershell-to-explore-windows-audio-drivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/use-powershell-to-explore-windows-audio-drivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Use PowerShell to Explore Windows Audio Drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to explore Windows audio drivers.<\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a problem with one of my computers—the audio driver is causing me fits. I would like to know if I can use Windows PowerShell to explore this issue. I think it would be really valuable, because I might have this issue come up again. Can you help me?<\/p>\n

—DB<\/p>\n

\"Hey, Hello DB,<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Hey, it is almost the weekend. In celebration of almost the weekend, I decided to get up early, fix a pot of Irish steel-cut oats, and a nice pot of English Breakfast tea. While the oats cooked, I used my Windows Surface to check my email. DB, this is when I ran across your email. Yes, Windows PowerShell can help in many different ways in looking at audio drivers.<\/p>\n

First, find the audio device<\/h2>\n

The first thing to do is to find the audio device. To do this, use the WMI class Win32_SoundDevice WMI class. The Win32_SoundDevice WMI class tells me the device ID and the name of the audio device. The command is shown here.<\/p>\n

 Get-CimInstance win32_sounddevice | fl *<\/p>\n

 The command and its associated output are shown here.<\/p>\n

 \"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Next, find the driver <\/span><\/h2>\n

Now that I know the name of the audio device, I can look for system drivers. To do this, I use the Win32_SystemDriver WMI class. I “cheap out” and pipe the results to the Where-Object<\/strong>. My resulting command is shown here. (gwmi<\/strong> is an alias for Get-WmiObject<\/strong>, ?<\/strong> is an alias for Where-Object<\/strong>, and fl i<\/strong>s an alias for Format-List<\/strong>). <\/p>\n

gwmi win32_systemdriver | ? caption -match ‘conexant’ | fl * <\/p>\n

The command and its associated output are shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Now get driver file info<\/h2>\n

Now that I have the path to the driver file, I can use the Get-Item<\/strong> cmdlet to retrieve version information. The first thing I need to do is to obtain the path to the driver. I can get this from the PathName<\/strong> property. I store it in a variable named $path<\/strong>. This is shown here. <\/p>\n

PS C:\\> $path = (gwmi win32_systemdriver | ? caption -match ‘conexant’).pathname <\/p>\n

PS C:\\> $path <\/p>\n

C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\drivers\\CHDRT64.sys<\/p>\n

Now I want to get only the VersionInfo <\/strong>property. To do this, I use the Get-Item<\/strong> cmdlet and return only VersionInfo<\/strong> as shown here.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> (Get-Item $path).versioninfo <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ProductVersion   FileVersion      FileName <\/p>\n

————–   ———–      ——– <\/p>\n

8.32.43.0        8.32.43.0 bui… C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\drivers\\CHDRT64.sys <\/p>\n

Hmm…<\/p>\n

I know there is more information in this property, so I pipe it to the Format-List<\/strong> cmdlet as shown here.<\/p>\n

(Get-Item $path).versioninfo | fl *<\/p>\n

The commands and the associated output are shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

DB, that is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to look at audio driver information.  Join me tomorrow for the Weekend Scripter.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to explore Windows audio drivers.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a problem with one of my computers—the audio driver is causing me fits. I would like to know if I can use Windows PowerShell to explore this issue. I think it would be really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,35,3,45,6],"class_list":["post-4088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-hardware","tag-peripherals-and-devices","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell","tag-wmi"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to explore Windows audio drivers.  Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a problem with one of my computers—the audio driver is causing me fits. I would like to know if I can use Windows PowerShell to explore this issue. I think it would be really […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}