If you get error messages indicating that the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service is corrupted, you may not be able to view network or connection properties, view system information or even connect to the Internet. You can force Windows to recreate the WMI repository by performing the following steps.

First, stop the WMI service. Here's how:

1. Click Start.
2. Right click My Computer and select Manage.
3. In the left pane, expand Services and Applications and click Services.
4. In the right pane, locate Windows Management Instrumentation, right click it, and select Stop.

1. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your Windows installation folder. This is the location to which you installed the operating system files; by default it is named Windows, unless you upgraded to XP from Windows 2000, in which case it is named WINNT. This is called the %systemroot% folder.
2. Navigate to [drive letter]:\%systemroot%\System32\Wbem\Repository and delete all files in the folder.
3. Reboot the computer.