Windows Management Instrumentation failed on SQL 2008 Installation

So here's the situation: I'm trying to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2005, with a pre-existing instance of SQL 2005. When I initialized the install, SQL 2008 threw an error over Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), and the error message lead one to think that the WMI service was not installed / running.

A quick check of my services confirmed that WMI was in fact running, and restarting the service as well as restarting the entire server did not resolve my issues.

I had found a couple BAT scripts that claimed to fix the issue like:

%SYSTEMDRIVE%
CD %windir%\system32\wbem
Mofcomp.exe cimwin32.mof
Regsvr32 /s wbemupgd.dll
Regsvr32 /s wbemsvc.dll
wmiprvse /regserver

The line Mofcomp.exe cimwin32.mof actually threw an error (Error Number: 0x80041014, Facility: WMI), but the error number only turned up this post on the Microsoft Forums, which did not help my problem. In fact the wbemtest.exe itself threw a WMI error at me when I tried to connect to "root\cimv2"

In digging through the server, and playing with the MOF files / mofcomp, it looks to me like my repository was corrupted somehow, and completely deleting the direcory did not help (in fact I would suggest against it! ).

Finally I found the holy grail of scripts, which did in fact fix my problem. Simply copy the script below, paste it into a file on your server / machine, save it as a .bat file, and run it. You might want to step away from the computer for a while, because it might take a while.

And finally, the script:

net stop winmgmt /y

c:

cd %systemroot%\system32\wbem

if exist %systemroot%\system32\wbem\repository.old rmdir /s /q

repository.old

rename %systemroot%\system32\wbem\repository repository.old

regsvr32 /s %systemroot%\system32\scecli.dll

regsvr32 /s %systemroot%\system32\userenv.dll

mofcomp cimwin32.mof

mofcomp cimwin32.mfl

mofcomp rsop.mof

mofcomp rsop.mfl

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.dll') do regsvr32 /s %%s

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mof') do mofcomp %%s

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mfl') do mofcomp %%s

-----------------------------------------------------------

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\winmgmt /clearadap

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\winmgmt /kill

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\winmgmt /unregserver

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\winmgmt /regserver

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\winmgmt /resyncperf

net stop winmgmt /y

if exist %systemroot\system32\wbem\repository.old rmdir /s /q

repository.old

rename %systemroot\system32\wbem\repository repository.old

regsvr32 -s %systemroot%\system32\scecli.dll

regsvr32 -s %systemroot%\system32\userenv.dll

mofcomp %systemroot%\system32\wbem\cimwin32.mof

mofcomp %systemroot%\system32\wbem\cimwin32.mfl

mofcomp %systemroot%\system32\wbem\rsop.mof

mofcomp %systemroot%\system32\wbem\rsop.mfl

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.dll') do regsvr32 /s %%s

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mof') do mofcomp %%s

for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mfl') do mofcomp %%s

net start winmgmt

%systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiprvse /regserver




END OF SCRIPT DON'T COPY ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't take credit for this script, I found it here but it was kind of painful digging it out of all of the other crap on the page......

Anyway, peace!
~M.