Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is Microsoft's take on WBEM standards for recording PC hardware, PC services, Windows settings, and software information. Anyone that has worked with WMI, particularly for gathering hardware and software inventory using systems management tools like Configuration Manager, know how valuable the collected information can be. They also know that when WMI fails, or becomes corrupted, the entire computer can fail to work.
Fortunately, Microsoft has a tool called WMIDiag to help diagnose problems. A new version, version 2.2, has just been released that fixes some glaring bugs and introduces some new functionality.
Download it here: The WMI Diagnosis Utility
WMIDiag is actually a VBScript (not PowerShell!) so it requires administrator rights to run and Windows Script Host (WSH) must be enabled. WMIDiag can't be used to fix WMI problems, but only used to diagnose where issues exist.
When run, it creates three log files that you'll need to sift through. They are:
-
.LOG – contains the WMI Diagnosis Tool activity and includes a WMI report
-
.TXT – contains the WMI Diagnosis Tool report
-
.CSV – contains stats
After you download and extract WMIDiag, there's a WMIDiag_Readme.doc included that gives you all the command-line parameters and necessary information for using the tool.
