As a Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) administrator, you might hear quite often a seemingly simple (but in reality very difficult) question: How many workstations our company exactly has? You know exactly how many ConfigMgr clients are on the ConfigMgr database, but how many of those are actually online and healthy? Which clients have problems with technologies that ConfigMgr utilizes e.g. WMI? If users have administrative rights on their workstations, they might even stop ConfigMgr client s...

Microsoft IT Configuration Manager team has recently deployed Configuration Manager 2007 R3 beta in production as part of R3 dogfooding. And below are the detailed steps we documented for deploying Configuration Manager 2007 R3 beta. Special Thanks to Partha Chandran for the detailed operations documentation for R3 beta deployment.

This document highlights R3 beta upgrade preparation, server upgrade and validation tasks  to be performed post R3 beta upgrade. Please note this document is not ...

The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) subsystem has evolved over time to become a key dependency for many applications, Configuration Manager being one of them.   We've been intertwined since the .698 build of WMI shipped with Systems Management Server 2.0 (there was even a WBEM Inventory component in SMS 1.2).  

Given this history and relationship it's important to know what to do when something goes wrong. 

I've spent many years investigating / troubleshooting WMI related issues ...