How to check the machine type? laptop or desktop?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure that this will depend on whether the manufacturer has bothered to provide that data on the current chipset. If they have not, then "Other" is the best you can do.

Check out this somewhat related article, which also suggests querying the BIOS directly.

Answer 2

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/sept04/hey0921.mspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa387204(VS.85).aspx which states that:

This documentation is derived from the CIM class descriptions published by the DMTF.

Presumably, that means the manufacturer had to provide some information for Windows to be able to discover it.

Answer 3

I don't think there is a definitive right answer for this and I've found WMI unreliable for it but I have been using the Win32 function GetSystemPowerStatus() to determine if there is a system battery, obviously system battery == portable computer.

I've never tried this on a desktop with a UPS though?!

Answer 4

Here's a good Microsoft article that suggests looking at a few other WMI classes to get a better idea of whether the computer is a laptop or desktop:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc180825.aspx

Win32_SystemEnclosure, ChassisTypes(1)=10
Win32_Battery or Win32_PortableBattery
Win32_PCMCIAController
Win32_DriverVXD.Name = "pccard"
Win32_ComputerSystem.Manufacturer
Win32_ComputerSystem.Model

And it also suggests to look in the registry for the Power scheme.

Answer 5

read registry key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\pcmcia, the ‘Start’ value, it's laptop if start =0, otherwise it's desktop machine if start doesn't exist or start != 0.