Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

WMI is used by default by all Windows performance monitors when creating a new asset. The WMI protocol has an advantage over older Windows performance registry calls, being more bandwidth effective. However, on some platforms like Windows Vista and Windows 2008 (without any service packs), WMI has a high performance impact and therefore Winperf may be preferred when monitoring these two platforms.

For inexperienced system administrators, WMI has a history of being hard to configure for remote monitoring.

WMI Troubleshooting

This article describes common problems with Windows performance monitoring and how to resolve it.

Background

The following error message is displayed

Access denied. User may lack remote launch and remote activation permission.

The following monitor types use WMI when the asset flag Use WMI is checked.

• WMI Query monitor (*)
• Active directory monitor(*)
• Bandwidth monitor
• CPU monitor
• Disk monitor
• Memory monitor
• Swap monitor

* Always use WMI

This error message is displayed when:

• The user account used is not enabled to use WMI in the domain or on the monitored machine.
• The firewall is closed.
• The user is not an administrator on the monitored machine.

Subtopics

• Verifying that is enabled for the account
• Adjusting the firewall settings
• Additional for non-administrator users
• Verifying that WMI works
• Problem with data returned from performance counters read by WMI
• Full index of Microsoft WMI troubleshooting articles