Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dealing with WMI Issues – Part 3


Over the last 2 days, we have addressed a couple of escalating methods in a process to repair the WMI subsystem on machines where it is not functioning properly. Today, we will cover, what is hopefully the last method needed, as it is a fairly drastic step: wiping the WBEM Repository.

The WBEM repository is the holding point for all of the compiled MOF and MTL files, so wiping it is about as close as one can come to "starting fresh" with WMI. To wipe the repository, simply stop the winmgmt service, rename the Repository folder (%WIN%\system32\WBEM\repository) to something new like Repository.old, then restart the winmgmt service. This will force the WMI subsystem to create a new repository and perform a repair at its next access.
With that complete, one can simply try to reinstall the SCCM Client on the affected machine. A good portion of the machines will then properly install. A small portion will still fail with WMI-related issues. In this case, simply repeat the WMIRepair process from the SCCM Client Center application, and try to reinstall the client.
If after wiping the repository and re-running the WMIRepair process the client still will not install, it is probably time to throw in the towel and reimage the machine.

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