Error 1601: Failed to retrieve WMI info. The object exporter not found

[stevedev]

I’m a BP NooB and trying out trial of your software for the first time. I’ve been going through your forum’s etc. What could be the culprit for:

Error 1601: Failed to retrieve WMI info. The object exporter specified was not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070776)

Target machine is 2012 r2

my machine: win 7 enterprise

pstools: 2.11

-Steve

[stevedev]

Tue-11:44:15> Windows Update: Error 1601: Failed to retrieve WMI info. The object exporter specified was not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070776)

Tue-11:43:46> Windows Update: Initializing…

Tue-11:43:46> Windows Update: Queued… (Check for available updates)

[stevedev]

as a side note, I tested psexec manually from command line and was able to run a ipconfig against remote computer.

[doug]

Steve – This is an issue with WMI not being setup/configured properly, probably at the firewall/network level. The target machine needs to be able to receive and process WMI requests. I have never seen this particular error, but it’s occurring during the attempt to retrieve WMI info from the target machine. If you were to disable all firewalls and put the two computers on the same network, I don’t think you’d see this error. It’s occurring because either the target machine firewall is not allowing connectivity to WMI or a network device in between the BatchPatch machine and the target machine is preventing full connectivity for WMI requests.

I would suggest that you first make sure your firewalls are configured to allow WMI/RPC traffic. See this link for help: using-batchpatch-with-windows-firewall

Next I would google 0x80070776 and/or ‘The object exporter specified was not found’ to see if any of the suggestions made resolve your issue. Here’s a link that might help: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/99c278fe-df63-408b-b5b1-b95554b6b630/access-wmi-to-nated-machine?forum=netfxbcl

-Doug

[stevedev]

K I agree as I also saw the other RPC error when attempting to do a cpu snapshot. It’s definitely not windows firewall as we have that off, but most likely our firewall appliances.. thanks for feedback. I’ll update if I get this solved.

[doug]

Steve – With a firewall appliance, the configuration for WMI can potentially be a bit trickier than with Windows firewall, depending on the particular firewall device. WMI connections, by default, are not established on a static/fixed port. Instead WMI uses dynamic port configuration for its connections, which means that the actual ports used for a given connection are established on-the-fly at the time of connection. Each connection will end up using different ports. In the context of a classic hardware firewall, this used to be a problem because hardware firewalls would typically require any open ports to be configured manually. An enterprise firewall administrator could never know in advance which ports would need to be opened. However, fortunately many modern firewalls now implement DCE/RPC, which solves this problem and allows the use of dynamic ports for WMI/RPC. If you have a network level hardware firewall in place between the BatchPatch computer and the target computers, you’ll need to configure it to allow DCE/RPC, so that it can open the necessary ports, on-the-fly, for each WMI connection. More info on DCE/RPC can be found at the following two links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCE/RPC

http://wiki.wireshark.org/DCE/RPC

[stevedev]

Also, so I can verify — which services are required to be running on target 2012 r2 server so that proper communication can happen (related to rpc/wmi)?

[doug]

I believe it should just be the WMI and RPC services that you need to make sure are running.

[jwiseguy]

Maybe you can disable UAC and reboot your machine

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

[stevedev]

Just a slight update.. after finding this article:

http://www.awesomes.net/?p=28

I updated my local hosts file, and pointed shortname at IP of server, and used shortname in BP..

I now get:

Error 1601: Failed to retrieve WMI info. Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

I have reviewed COM Security and WMI Control Security on target server as mentioned here and in similar articles:

http://spman219.blogspot.com/2013/04/allow-remote-wmi-connection-in-windows.html

and can’t find an issue. I am a domain admin, and administrators have remote rights for wmi on this box. ARgh!

[stevedev]

Score! I had forgotten to re-input my creds in BP — working now .. hosts file fix solved my issues.

[doug]

stevedev – This is very interesting, and it sounds like you’ve made some progress. Out of curiosity, would you mind describing a bit about your environment? I’ve never heard of the

The object exporter specified was not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070776)

error that you were receiving, and I’d be curious to know more about your infrastructure to understand why it was occurring. I’m glad that you got it resolved, but it’s peculiar that it was happening in the first place. The article you linked to above mentions a NAT setup. Are you somehow trying to connecting to WMI through a NAT device? Is it a one-to-one NAT? I can’t imagine how it could work in a many-to-one NAT/PAT setup.

As for the new Access is denied error, can you confirm that the Domain Admins group is the in the local administrators group on the target machine?

Please also take a look at the following link for some additional suggestions. See if any of the options listed here are able to work for you.

batchpatch-authentication-in-domain-and-workgroup-non-domain-environments

Ultimately I can tell you that I have never seen the Access is denied error be inaccurate. That is to say that if you’re getting Access is denied then it’s surely a permissions (or similar) issue, as opposed to there being some other underlying problem.

Another quick test to try is to just make sure that local WMI connections can be made on the box. So instead of trying to remotely connect, try to run BatchPatch directly on the machine in question. However, when you launch BatchPatch on that machine, make sure to run it with elevation using right-click run-as administrator. Then add the localhost (using the machine name) to the grid. Then see what happens. Do you still get the Access is denied error or is it successful?

Also, for the sake of testing, I would suggest using just the “Get last bootup time” action. This is a WMI-only action, whereas the Windows Updates actions use WMI plus PsExec, which requires additional access beyond WMI. It’s prob best to first make sure that the WMI-only actions, such as “Get last bootup time,” work properly first before trying the actions that use WMI in addition to PsExec.

Keep me posted.

-Doug

[stevedev]

notes: The access is denied error was directly related to me forgetting to put my credentials back into the row in BP — specifying my domain login — after restarting BP with a fresh/blank .bps file.

My connection to target traverses through at least 2 firewall endpoints, one here at the office and one at our managed service provider’s data center. This is an unusual route in that it’s pub ip to pub ip with nat translation happening and ACLs happening at both locations. No vpn involved.

I originally had put FQDN in the server name field.

After doing the hosts file change mapping sever shortname to ip of server, and using the shortname in BP, all wmi connections working. I’ve done multiple things, query disk space, check for available updates, etc. All appears to be working.

[doug]

Excellent! Glad you got it working. Thanks for the extra info about your environment. That’s helpful to know.

-Doug

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