SMS Hardware Inventory

This page details problems and issues relating to Hardware Inventory.

Client not reporting Hardware Inventory [19/1/01]
Compaq Insight Manager Agents and SMS [4/12/00]
Corrupt Hardware Inventory for laptops that share docking stations [4/11/00]
"ERROR 4 - Get HW Inventory Sites data failed !!" error in HWINV32.LOG [24/4/03]
"Error: Unable to parse this mif: syntax error on line 309, token 'ID'" [20/5/03]
Four core MOFs can't be compiled during WBEMDSK installation and the installation fails [18/11/00]
Inventorying External Hardware Devices [19/2/03]
Is there a Way to use Software Distribution to Start a Manual Hardware Inventory Scan? [5/3/03]
Large number of SP1 clients not performing Hardware Inventory [9/11/00]
"Last Hardware Scan" Date Incremented by One Month on Parent Primary [30/7/03]
Missing 'processor' information in Resource Explorer [24/1/01]
Monitor Manufacturer and Model Not Being Reported as Part of Hardware Inventory [18/7/03]
Resource Explorer doesn't Show All Classes [09/03/04]
Using WMI 1.5 to pull asset tag information [4/1/01]
Windows 2000 clients keep finding new Virtual Keyboard and Mouse devices [10/1/01]
Windows 95 clients not running Hardware Inventory [3/11/00]

Client not reporting Hardware Inventory

If you've got problems with a number of your clients not reporting any Hardware inventory information then here's some things to try... [Go to article]

Compaq Insight Manager Agents and SMS

Looking for experiences of loading Compaq Insight agents for SMS?... [Go to article]

Corrupt Hardware Inventory for laptops that share docking stations

If you've noticed that Hardware Inventory is corrupt for laptop users that share docking stations then this might help... [Go to article]

"ERROR 4 - Get HW Inventory Sites data failed !!" error in HWINV32.LOG

Contributed By: Rod Trent [MVP SMS]
If you're seeing this error in your HWINV32.LOG then help is at hand... [Go to article]

"Error: Unable to parse this mif: syntax error on line 309, token 'ID'"

Contributed By: Teena Blome and Mark Nunn
From the FAQShop SMS Forum, if you’re seeing the above error when running a MIF file through MIFCheck it could be down to the order of your fields in your MIF file... [Go to article]

Four core MOFs can't be compiled during WBEMDSK installation and the installation fails

If after you've tried installing the WBEMDSK the four core MOFs can't be compiled and the installation fails on a domain controller then you've hit on a known problem... [Go to article]

Inventorying External Hardware Devices

Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP SMS]
So how do you inventory hardware such as external CD drives, printers, etc? Well you can try this script provided by Rob Olson of DudeWorks.com for starters... [Go to article]

Is there a Way to use Software Distribution to Start a Manual Hardware Inventory Scan?

Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP SMS]
Here’s a couple of ways you can manually start a Hardware Inventory scan on your clients through Software Distribution… [Go to article]

Large number of SP1 clients not performing Hardware Inventory

If you find that a large number of SMS 2.0 SP1 clients aren't performing a Hardware Inventory then this article offers some advice... [Go to article]

"Last Hardware Scan" Date Incremented by One Month on Parent Primary

Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP SMS]
If you’ve experienced the above problem you’re not going crazy, it’s a known bug as detailed here... [Go to article]

Missing 'processor' information in Resource Explorer

Can anyone explain this to me. In Resource Explorer under 'Hardware', sometimes there is a 'processor' item shown whereas sometimes there isn't. These computers are all Compaq, just different desktop versions. Our environment is Windows 95/98 & NT 4.0. Is this typical? We are trying to explain to our management why when we add the processor clock speed to our query, some of the machine disappear.

When we had this problem we found that we had a corrupt 'SMS_DEF.MOF' on some machines which caused machines to drop out of reports if certain items were included. If the machine cannot compile and execute the MOF file because of a syntax problem, it will bypass the section with the error and continue on with the inventory. Check your 'hinv32.log' on the clients missing the CPU item and look for any errors during hardware inventory. If the local MOF file is corrupt, you may need to force a resync at that site, which means manually copying the file to the Site Server to allow the clients to copy it.

Monitor Manufacturer and Model Not Being Reported as Part of Hardware Inventory

Contributed By: Kenneth Lyons
If you notice that in some cases the manufacturer and model number of your monitors isn't being returned as part of hardware inventory then here’s a possible solution… [Go to article]

Resource Explorer doesn't Show All Classes

Contributed By: Mark A. Mears, MCSE [MSFT]
If you find that you've got some machines that don't show all classes for Hardware Inventory in Resource Explorer then it could be down to the Provider you're using… [Go to article]

Using WMI 1.5 to pull asset tag information

If you want to use WMI 1.5 to pull information from your clients such as asset tag information goto:

http://www.microsoft.com/smsmgmt/techdetails/getassetinfo.asp

The information contained in this article describes the steps necessary to obtain Type 3 information from the WMI providers. This information will walk you through enabling the 'system enclosure' class for reporting by SMS during Hardware Inventory. This class contains two lovely little attributes:

SMBIOS Asset Tag
Service Tag

Now, using this on both a Windows 2000 Professional box and an NT 4.0 server, I have obtained via SMS the Dell Serial number <service tag> off both of these machines.

The only requirement is WMI 1.5 which comes natively on Windows 2000. It must be installed on NT 4 or Windows 9x (see the link on the Hot Links page).

Windows 2000 clients keep finding new Virtual Keyboard and Mouse devices

I have two Windows 2000 machines that always find new hardware consisting of a Virtual Keyboard Device and a Virtual Mouse Device. No amount of installing, re-installing, ignoring, whatever will stop them from re-finding these?

Make sure you aren't running SMS on top of a 'Debug/Checked' version of Windows 2000 such as the MSDN version.

Windows 95 clients not running Hardware Inventory

I have some Windows 95 machines that aren't collecting hardware inventory. I've re-installed the client agent and still no success. Any ideas? Below are the errors I'm getting from the 'hinv.log' and 'setup.log' from the '\WBEM' directory.

HINV.LOG

Reschedule agent to launch on boot.
ERROR - Failed to open root\cimv2 Namespace: 0x80041001 $$<Hardware
Inventory Agent><Wed Aug 30 12:15:29.390 2000><thread=4294110631 (0xFFF2EDA7)
STATMSG: ID=10502 SEV=E LEV=M SOURCE="SMS Client" COMP="Hardware Inventory
Agent" SYS=BFROGLEY SITE=CS1 PID=4294450343 TID=4294110631 GMTDATE=Wed Aug 30 18:15:29.390 2000 ISTR0="root\cimv2" ISTR1="" ISTR2="" ISTR3="" ISTR4="" ISTR5="" ISTR6="" ISTR7="" ISTR8="" ISTR9="" NUMATTRS=0 $$<Hardware Inventory Agent><Wed Aug 30 12:15:29.500 2000><thread=4294110631 (0xFFF2EDA7)>

SETUP.LOG from '\WBEM'

Setup failed with the following message:
The original WBEM repository could not be upgraded successfully. It was renamed to CIM.BAK, and a new one was created. The following WBEM CORE MOF file(s) failed to load...
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\WBEM\CimWin32.MOF
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\WBEM\RegEvent.mof
The following non-WBEM CORE MOF file(s) failed to load...
C:\WINDOWS\MS\SMS\clicomp\hinv\sms_def.mof
C:\WINDOWS\MS\SMS\SITEFILE\CS1\hinv\sms_def.mof

If you remove the '\WBEM' (directory and Registry entries) then run 'wbemsdk.exe' from the CAP it seems to correct the problem. This also fixes the problem if you see 'ERROR - Failed to open root\cimv2 Namespace' in the 'HINV.log' file.