Error while opening SQL Server Configuration Manager – Fixed

Hi Friends,

Today I again experienced the same old frustrating error while opening SQL Server Configuration Manager on one of the SQL Servers. Refer the screenshot below.

The error says:  Cannot connect to WMI provider. You do not have permission or the server is unreachable. Note that you can only manage SQL Server 2005 and later servers with SQL Server Configuration Manager.

Invalid namespace [0x8004100]  Adding text so that you can find it through search engine when you face this issue.

Now as the error mentioned: everybody will directly jump to services.msc console to check if WMI service (Windows Management Instrumentation) is running or not. Even i checked the same thing, It was running. The next step you might want to check is if WMI Service is running properly or not. Etc

Now Please stop validating your WMI Service, the issue is not related to WMI connectivity\service; having said that, it is related to WMI only but the error message is not pointing to the underlying issue.

The issue is with the WMI provider for your SQL instance. Basically what happens “whenever you uninstall any SQL instance from a Server it somehow also removes WMI provider – but this becomes a problem when you have multiple instances on a Server and you uninstall one of them. “

The 32-bit instance and the 64-bit instance of SQL Server 2008 share the same WMI configuration file. This file is located in the %programfiles(x86)% folder.

So what’s the solution\Fix?
The solution is a mof file which contains all configuration settings which regenerates WMI Provider for SQL Server, All you need to do is just locate the below mentioned folder on your server and issue the command with correct path.

mofcomp c:\program files (x86) \Microsoft SQL Server\100\Shared\sqlmgmproviderxpsp2up.mof”

This is how it will look once you issue this command on a Command Prompt.

That’s it once you see “Done!” On the command Prompt, everything is fixed and back to normal.

Now you can open your SQL Server Configuration Manager and work as you wish.

Do let me know if there is any other way to fix this; I’ll add that to my knowledge.

Enjoy!

Regards

Sarabpreet Anand