Running Get-Counter remotely on to a Windows 7 client

[James Booth Participant Points: 0Rank: Member]

Hi again guys,

I'm playing around with Get-Counter, but I've got really odd issue. If I try to run Get-Counter -ComputerName XXX to a Windows 7 client, i get

Get-Counter : Unable to connect to the specified computer or the computer is offline.
At line:1 char:1
+ Get-Counter -ComputerName 'MY-WIN7-CLIENT -Counter "\Memory\Available M ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidResult: (:) [Get-Counter], Exception
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CounterApiError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetCounterCommand

The command I'm using is Get-Counter -ComputerName 'MY-WIN7-CIENT' -Counter "\Memory\Available MBytes" -Continuous | Out-GridView.

• I've made sure the machine is online & DNS resolves
• I've tried it from Windows Server 2012 R2 and from another Windows 7 client
• I can Enter-PSSession and run the command locally
• I can actually connect via the perfmon gui
• I have disabled firewalls on both my server and client to test
• I've upgraded the Windows 7 clients to WMF 4/Powershell 4.0
• I've tried using different counters and also removing -ComputerName parameter and directly entering it into -Counter "\\MY-WIN7-CLIENT\..."
• I've tried multiple Windows 7 clients and Server 2012 R2 servers

However...

• If I run the command on the Windows 7 client including the -ComputerName and use the computer's name, it still fails (Although, it seems a lot of people get this issue)
• I can successfully run the command from Server 2012 R2 to Server 2012 R2
• I can successfully run the command from Windows 7 to Server 2012 R2
• It fails if I run the command from Server 2012 R2 or Windows 7 to Windows 7

Anyone had any joy with this? Is this just a limitation of Windows 7?

Cheers.

[Don Jones Keymaster Points: 1,811Rank: Community Hero]

It may just be a bug in how the command is dealing with it's internal remote connectivity. I'm not even sure what protocol it's trying to use – I'd have to either decompile the command or sniff the traffic.

Using Invoke-Command would be the best workaround I could offer.

[James Booth Participant Points: 0Rank: Member]

Heh, all the time I spent trying to troubleshoot it and I never thought of using Invoke-Command. Sometimes the best answers are the simplest ones. I was worried at first that Out-Grid would't work, but I cane pipe Invoke-Command { Yada yada } to it!

Thanks for the metaphorical slap around the head!

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