In the wake of installing Vista SP1, I’ve been noticing various little “gotchas” that have popped up and require my attention as time goes by. It’s been about 4 to 5 months since SP1 hit, and I’ve been slowly and steadily inspecting and cleaning up in its wake.
I’ve also noticed some differences between applying SP1 to an original Vista installation versus upgrading same to the version of Vista with SP1 slipstreamed in (Build 6001, which I received from Microsoft in late April and just started playing with a couple of weeks ago). In my next few blogs, I’ll describe various common issues and fixes for dealing with what I’ve been able to find and fix, and conclude with a list of as-yet unresolved issues, or stuff I’ve just had to work around.
Because I’ve found this on all three of my current Vista SP1 machines, I have to believe this is a pretty common problem for all SP1 upgrades. If you open the Event Viewer (type
%systemroot%system32mmc.exe eventvwr.msc into the search box to do this) and look in the Event Log for a WMI error, chances are pretty good its detail pane will look like this:
Apparently, SP1 does something to corrupt this particular event filter, but it’s pretty easy to restore WMI to a pristine state. Here’s how:
- Open a command window (type cmd into the search box)
- At the command line type net stop winmgmt (agree to the various prompts to kill Security Center and IP Helper: it’s OK, you’ll be rebooting soon anyway).
- Delete all files in the Web-based Enterprise Management file repository (type delete
%systemroot%system32wbemRepository*.* at the command line, then agree to its “really do this prompt”) - Reboot your system and leave it alone for 5 minutes or so. You will find a string of warnings and messages in the event log from WMI later, but these are reporting on its much-desired reconstruction efforts.
- Reboot again. Henceforth, the errors and warnings should cease and desist.
How did I find this out, you ask? I searched Google on the error code displayed in the preceding screenshot (0x80041003) and turned up this recipe at WindowsForums.org. I’m just trying to spread the word.
Next up: what to try when Windows Update becomes inaccessible.
–Ed—
