Some WMI properties empty

[Jeff Montgomery]

I noticed some of the Compaq admin software seems to use WMI, so I am hoping someone can explain something that happens with my Compaq rack systems.

I have written a WMI script that scans a system locally (or remotely) and stores data about the system in about 30 WMI hardware/software categories. Generally it works well and returns a lot of good information, but I've noticed that a high percentage of my Compaq systems (e.g. ALL of our DL380 rack-mount servers) return more empty fields than other vendor's systems when I do WMI queries, such as Win32_ComputerSystem.Manufacturer and Model - these fields are empty on the DL380s. This should contain information such as "Compaq" and "Compaq DL380", etc.. These are pretty basic fields and unfortunately having them blank sort of defeats the purpose of using WMI to automatically inventory systems. Win32_PhysicalMemory queries return nothing at all, which means I don't get the memory config.

Any idea what might be causing this incomplete information? The OS on some boxes are Win2k Server and some are NT Server 4.0, and if any Compaq software is installed, it probably dates from 2000-01.

Thanks for any tips,

Jeff