Hello, In an effort to set up a Spiceworks installation I've ran into a problem with WMI that I can't seem to find a clear cut answer to and I'm hoping to gain some insight here. I've discovered that WMI connections work from any workstation in my domain to the domain controllers but not from workstation to workstation or domain controllers to workstation. I am not very familiar with the configuration for WMI but the services are active on the machines I'm working with, windows firewall is completely turned off for both the DC's and workstations (I've always turned them on and enabled everything to no avail) and the DCOM and RPC services are running. I'm thoroughly stuck on this issue as I just can't seem to find any pertinent information for why the communication with WMI seems so one-sided. I can connect to WMI fine locally on any workstation, also. I am on a Windows Server 2003 functional level forest/domain. The AD server I am connecting to is Windows Server 2008 R2 and I have Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and Windows XP Professional (SP3) 32-bit workstations within the domain. The error I receive when trying to connect from the domain to any workstation is; Code = 0x800706ba The RPC Server is unavailable Facility = Win32 The error I receive when trying to connecting from one workstation to another is; The RPC Server is unavailable. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Gabe Update: In looking at the logs, I've found more information that I'm not sure how to decipher but is pertinent to the issue. DCOM got error "2147944122" from the computer WORKSTATION1 when attempting to activate the server: {8BC3F05E-D86B-11D0-A075-00C04FB68820} is what I'm seeing when I'm trying to connect from a domain controller to the workstation by name and I get the same message when trying to connect with the IP address. Only instead of the computer name showing up, of course, it's the IP.

Hi, Thank you for your post here. From the description, you have the issue that You cannot establish WMI connection when: DC------> Workstations Workstations------> Workstations While it works well when: Workstations------> DC Workstation------> Workstation itself 1. First of all, could you please utilize the RPCping to verify the RPC Connectivity which heads to workstations when you disable the firewall? What happens if you create firewall rules/exceptions (remote administration) on Windows 7/Windows XP clients? 2. To verify how workstations handle incoming connections, you can install Network Monitor to capture the traffic when you attempt to connection remote WMI. Does the workstation receive the incoming traffic? Does it respond the request?

Hi Miles, thanks for the response. I did run RPCping and whether the firewall is enabled on the workstations with everything allowed or completely disabled, the result is the same. I can run wmic from the DC to the workstations but it isn't working with the IP address, only the name. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to go about fixing this issue since I'm sure there's something that needs to be done to remedy that issue but I'm not sure of where to start. I will install network monitor on some of these workstations and see what I can find out and post a follow-up. Thanks, Gabe

Miles, What filters should I use to provide the right information for you regarding the WMI communication? I don't seem to be gathering anything meaningful from the RPC communication filters I'm applying currently. Thanks, Gabe