Get-WmiObject : The RPC server is unavailable. (Ex

Question

When I run

Get-WmiObject win32_SystemEnclosure -Computer hostname | select serialnumber

it works for both local and remote hosts.

When I do this for a list of hosts using

ForEach ($_ in gc u:\pub\list.txt) {
    Get-WmiObject win32_SystemEnclosure -Computer $_ | select serialnumber | format-table -auto @{Label="Hostname"; Expression={$_}}, @{Label="Service Tag"; Expression={$_.serialnumber}}
}

it returns

Get-WmiObject : The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)

Answer 1

I had same issue, and for me, I was trying to use an IP Address instead of computer name. Just adding this as one more potential solution for people finding this down the road.

Answer 2

Solved.

I was running into the exact same error message when trying to execute the following script (partial) against a remote VM that was configured to be in the WORKGROUP.

Restart-Computer -ComputerName MyComputer -Authentication Default -Credential $cred -force

I noticed I could run the script from another VM in the same WORKGROUP when I disabled the firewall but still couldn't do it from a machine on the domain. Those two things along with Stackflow suggestions is what brought me to the following solution:

Note: Change these settings at your own risk. You should understand the security implications of these changes before applying them.

On the remote machine:

• Make sure you re-enable your Firewall if you've disabled it during testing.
• Run Enable-PSRemoting from PowerShell with success
• Go into wf.msc (Windows Firewall with Advanced Security)
• Confirm the Private/Public inbound 'Windows Management Instrumentation (DCOM-In)' rule is enabled AND make sure the 'Remote Address' property is 'Any' or something more secure.
• Confirm the Private/Public inbound 'Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)' rule is enabled AND make sure the 'Remote Address' property is 'Any' or something more secure.

Optional: You may also need to perform the following if you want to run commands like 'Enter-PSSession'.

• Confirm the Private/Public inbound 'Windows Management Instrumentation (ASync-In)' rule is enabled AND make sure the 'Remote Address' property is 'Any' or something more secure.
• Open up an Inbound TCP port to 5985

IMPORTANT! - It's taking my remote VM about 2 minutes or so after it reboots to respond to the 'Enter-PSSession' command even though other networking services are starting up without problems. Give it a couple minutes and then try.

Side Note: Before I changed the 'Remote Address' property to 'Any', both of the rules were set to 'Local subnet'.

Answer 3

Enabling following FW rules on target system resolved the problem on Win2k16:

• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)
• Distribiuted Transaction Coordinator (RPC)
• Distribiuted Transaction Coordinator (RPC-EPMAP)

Answer 4

Thought I would add that we also ran into this issue with multiple machines in our domain. I created a list of offending machines and added them all to a text file from which to run the script. I ran this from the CMD prompt using elevated privileges.

 psexec @firewallFix.txt -d netsh advfirewall firewall 
        set rule name="Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)" 
        profile=domain new enable=yes profile=domain

Answer 5

If you've tried some of the suggestions in the other answers, most notably:

• David Brabant's answer: confirming the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) inbound firewall rule is enabled
• Abhi_Mishra's answer: confirming DCOM is enabled in the Registry

Then consider other common reasons for getting this error:

• The remote machine is OFF
• You specified an invalid computer name
• There are network connectivity problems between you and the target computer

Answer 6

I found this blog post which suggested adding a firewall exception for "Remote Administration", and that worked for us on our Windows Server 2008 Enterprise systems.

http://mikefrobbins.com/2012/03/08/get-wmiobject-the-rpc-server-is-unavailable-exception-from-hresult-0x800706ba/