How To: Repair WMI

Symptoms of the problem

When you try to access a Windows XP-based network computer, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

xxxxxxx is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Access is denied.

Note In this error message, xxxxx is the IP address or the computer name of the Windows XP-based computer.

You may experience this issue when you use the IP address or the computer name to access a shared folder that is stored on the Windows XP-based computer. You may also experience this issue when you use My Network Places to access a shared folder in this situation.

Cause:

WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is corrupted.

Solution:

Re-install WMI:

This is the one that worked in my case:

Comprehensive rebuild method

Click Start, Run and type the following command, and press ENTER:

rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection WBEM 132 %windir%\inf\wbemoc.inf

Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive when prompted. Repair process should take few minutes to complete. Then restart Windows for the changes to take effect.
Other Solutions:

Microsoft's WMI diagnosis utility

Microsoft has released a new diagnosis tool that helps system administrators diagnose and repair problems with the WMI. It is advisable to go through the WMIDiag_ReadMe.doc file to understand how the utility works, and the supported command-line arguments. Here is the download link: The WMI Diagnosis Utility
You may use the utility (WMIDiag.vbs) to find if a repository rebuild is necessary or not. The utility runs a comprehensive testing of WMI and reports the results to a log file, which is placed in the user's Temp folder (%Temp%) folder by default.
Mr. Alain Lissoir [MS] was kind enough to share the following info with me:
If there is a need among all problems detected by WMIDiag to rebuild the repository after attempting all fix suggested by WMIDiag, WMIDiag will list the rebuild of the repository as the last action among thing that can be done (before rebuilding the repository).
Here are some of the useful links that I came across from Alain's homepage:

• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Team Blog
• DO NOT DELETE THE REPOSITORY right away! Read this article instead! WMI Isn't Working!

Rebuilding the WMI Repository

If you experience behavior when using WMI, such as application errors or scripts that used to work are no longer working, you may have a corrupted WMI repository. To fix a corrupted WMI repository, you have to reinstall WMI. Follow these steps:

For Windows XP Service Pack 2

Click Start, Run and type the following command:

rundll32 wbemupgd, UpgradeRepository

This command is used to detect and repair a corrupted WMI Repository. The results are stored in the setup.log (%windir%\system32\wbem\logs\setup.log) file.

For Windows Server 2003

Use the following command to detect and repair a corrupted WMI Repository:

rundll32 wbemupgd, RepairWMISetup

On other versions of Windows you can rebuild the Repository by doing the following:

• Click Start, Run and type CMD.EXE
• Type this command and press Enter:

net stop winmgmt

• Using Windows Explorer, rename the folder %windir%\System32\Wbem\Repository. (For example, %windir%\System32\Wbem\Repository_bad.). %windir% represents the path to the Windows directory, which is typically C:\Windows.
• Switch to Command Prompt window, and type the following and press ENTER after each line:

net start winmgmt

EXIT

Courtesy: The above is excerpted from Microsoft Technet article WMI Isn't Working!
© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Re-registering the WMI components (Ref WMI FAQ)

The .DLL and .EXE files used by WMI are located in %windir%\system32\wbem. You might need to re-register all the .DLL and .EXE files in this directory. If you are running a 64-bit system you might also need to check for .DLLs and .EXE files in %windir%\sysWOW64\wbem.
To re-register the WMI components, run the following commands at the command prompt:

• cd /d %windir%\system32\wbem
• for %i in (*.dll) do RegSvr32 -s %i
• for %i in (*.exe) do %i /RegServer

Note that none of the above two methods restore the missing files related to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). So, below is a comprehensive repair procedure that restores all the missing WMI modules. In case of missing WMI modules, you may use the following method.

Comprehensive rebuild method

Important note: If you've installed a Service Pack, you need to insert your Windows XP CD with Service Pack integration (called as the Slipstreamed Windows XP CD). If you don't have one, you may point to the %Windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386 folder for a recent version of the system files required during WMI repair. Or you may create a slipstreamed Windows XP CD and insert it when prompted.
Click Start, Run and type the following command, and press ENTER:

rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection WBEM 132 %windir%\inf\wbemoc.inf

Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive when prompted. Repair process should take few minutes to complete. Then restart Windows for the changes to take effect.
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairwmi.htm