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So you can use

Get-WmiObject win32_systemenclosure | select chassistypes

To get the Windows chassis type for a machine as defined in this list:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee156537.aspx

Does anyone have any idea how this is actually generated? Is it something that is defined by the manufacturer at the BIOS level? Or generated by Windows based on some other criteria.

An example is that the 'Surface Pro 2' is actually number 11 which is 'Hand Held'.

Basically I want to use this chassis type in SCCM to define some settings but I want to be positive that I can count on it. For instance, in this day and age what's the chassis type difference between:

Mini Tower, Low Profile Desktop, Space-Saving etc.

I can't find any literature on the way this is actually defined, it seems to be up to the manufacturer and how they define it.

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From the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) Reference Specification at www.dmtf.org:

...the System Management BIOS Reference Specification addresses how motherboard and system vendors present management information about their products in a standard format by extending the BIOS interface on Intel architecture systems

So the value will be set either by a motherboard manufacturer, in which case (haha) it may be rather inaccurate as their is no way to determine what the enclosure will be (e.g. I didn't tell Asus what case I was going to put their M/B in), or a larger vendor (like Dell) could be expected to know exactly which enclosure type the M/B will be installed in.

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  • I was afraid of that. Its not a big deal, dealing with enterprise hardware is usually pretty reliable. I might throw some other checks in to confirm specific hardware for different models. Sep 8, 2014 at 9:08
  • @mhouston100 you could start out by simply surveying the values on a number of different servers and see how accurately it conforms to your expectations Sep 8, 2014 at 11:16
  • @mathias i can certainly do that for now, querying SCCM can return any values i want to check. I would be more concerned about future devices, the waters are very muddy when looking at things like convertible tablets and devices like the surface. As we trim down the models we are supporting it would probably become easier to target groups via the model name then arbitrary chassis numbers. Sep 8, 2014 at 11:22

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