Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
Overview
Windows Management Instrumentation WMI is a Microsoft Technology that allows the management of local and remote machines. It is used extensively by the XIA Configuration Service to collect information. WMI uses RPC to execute the commands on remote machines.
Installation
WMI is a core Operating System component and will typically already be installed with the Operating System however it may need to be installed on older Windows NT4 machines. WMI Core 1.5 for Windows NT 4.0 can be downloaded from the following Microsoft Web Site
Errors caused by WMI
Typically, WMI errors are caused by insufficient permissions on the remote machine or because WMI is not installed or the ports required by WMI are being blocked by a firewall device or the Windows Firewall Service. The XIA Configuration Client Service will test WMI connectivity before starting a Scan and may report errors such as the following
Could not connect to WMI on the remote machine The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)
Troubleshooting WMI Issues
- Ensure that the user account that the XIA Configuration Service is running on has the appropriate permissions to execute WMI on the Remote machine. By default, this is local Administrator permissions.
- Ensure that there is no Firewall between the XIA Configuration Service and the remote machine.
- Execute wbemtest on the machine running the XIA Configuration Service (see steps below) and attempt to connect to the remote machine.
- Execute wbemtest locally on the remote machine if this succeeds it indicates that WMI is correctly installed and running.
- Ensure that the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service is started on the Remote Machine
Troubleshoot with wbemtest.exe
It is possible to run queries against the local or remote WMI system using wbemtest.
For more information see Test WMI with wbemtest.exe.
Troubleshoot with PowerShell
It is possible to run queries against the local or remote WMI system using Windows PowerShell.
For more information see Test WMI with PowerShell.
WMI Stability HotFix
For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 the following HotFix may help improve WMI stability http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933061
Other Tools
The Microsoft WMI Diagnosis Utility, Version 2.0 may assist with troubleshooting. This tool can be downloaded from Microsoft at the following location.