Testing WMI connectivity to remote computers
First, to check and see if WMI is open on the remote computer you can perform the following steps:
- Run wbemtest from the run line:
- On the resulting Window click Connect... and add the \\<RemoteComputerName>\ to the beginning of the path:
- Click Connect and if you get an error it's time to hit your favorite search engine and do some research.
Most of the time you will receive one of the follwing errors:
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Access is denied - This one should be obvious. You will want to look up enabling DCOM permissions or WMI permissions.
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RPC Server is unavailable - The Remote Procedure Call is failing. Either the computer name can't be resolved or a firewall is blocking WMI access.
Enable WMI through the Windows Firewall
To enable WMI on Windows 7 for a single computer simply navigate to the advanced settings of the Windows Firewall and navigate to the section for Windows Management Instrumentation in both the inbound and outbound rules and enable them:
In most cases this will be enough. If it still doesn't work then you may need to dig a little deeper.
See this helpful link for enabling specific ports and such http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa389286(v=vs.85).aspx
Enable WMI with Group Policy for Windows 7
If you see this works and you need to enable WMI via Group Policy for multiple computers perform the following steps for Windows 7 (obtained from here):
- Edit the group policy object you wish to put these settings into.
- Expand the Computer Config > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Windows Firewall with Advanced Security > Windows Firewall with Advanced Security > Inbound Rules node.
- Right-click in the working area and choose New Rule...
- Choose the Predefined option, and select Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) from the drop-down list, Next.
- There are a number of options here, but I tend to just select one: the (WMI-In) option with the Domain profile value. If you aren't sure what you need, then just remember you can come back and add the others later. Next button.
- Allow the connection > Finish.
Sometimes WMI can be a bit tricky and breaks fairly frequently in older versions of Windows. If WMI isn't working, even on the computer system itself, then you will have to do a repair of WMI. However, that isn't for this post :-)!!