Tuesday, January 13, 2009

No Network, WMI errors, Service Pack 2 install fail

A server was no longer visible on the network. An engineer went to site and reported the following symptoms :
1. Server had a 169 address indicating that it could get its address from DHCP.
2. In Network Connections control panel the network and dial-up connections were missing.
3. The "Network Connections" service was not started - and could not be started.

The symptoms were as described in :
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825826
How to troubleshoot missing network connections icons in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP

So the problem appeared to be due to the Network Connections service not starting.
When looking at properties of Network Connections service an Access Denied was returned.


It was also reported that an attempt at installed service pack 2 had recently failed.
The Service Pack was reapplied (but failed) but the svcpack.log shows :
366.891: Starting process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\mofcomp.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\wlbsprov.mof
367.032: Return Code = 3
367.032: Starting process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\mofcomp.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\cimwin32.mof
367.766: Return Code = 3
367.766: DoInstallation:RunInfProcesses for ProcessesToRun Failed
367.766: Service Pack 2 Setup encountered an error: An error in updating your system has occurred.

From this I arrived at : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945763.

Ran WMIDag which advised :
The 'Impersonate Client after authentication' Local Policy is disabled or the
'SERVICE' account has been removed from that Local Policy.

Looking at local User Rights Assignments, it could be seen that they had been excessively modified. After putting these back to normal, the service could be started and all was well.