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I am having a real problem getting spiceworks to dectect windows 7 machines on our network.

To start, I was not the person who implemented Spiceworks. The admin who did used his credentials for authentication. He is no longer with our company so we have since changed his password (in AD) and demoted him from admin in Spiceworks but it seems to still try to use his credentials. (Which of course fails) I try using our domain administrator credentials to authenticate and it still doesn’t to work.

As far as fixing the detection problem, I have used the fix it tool and that sometimes works. I have also followed the command line instructions and sometimes that work and sometimes it does not. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

Our network also has a separate subnet for another site and some users travel between them which causes another problem. It seems Spiceworks tries to find the PC by the last known IP and can’t since it has changed. We do not use DNS scavenging and I was wondering if that would help with this problem.

I have been tasked with deploying 50 more desktop windows 7 machines and I was wondering if someone could help me with some suggestions on my current problem and best practices for deploying the new machines so that Spiceworks can do what it should. Right now it is basically a ticketing system and nothing more. As for Spiceworks’ other features such as inventory, application & license tracking, ping, wol, etc, it is mostly useless. I am unclear as to how much was poor implementation of Spiceworks and how much might be Spiceworks shortcomings. Thank you.

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Something you can try directly on the Win7 computers is this tool (This was one of the things I tried when I had problems getting my Win7 machines to scan in initially):

Check if the old admin credentials are still stored in Spiceworks in this section, if so, remove them:

  • Settings > Network Scan > Stored Passwords: Take a look in WMI > Existing Accounts and anything else with (#) that isn’t (0)

I don’t use Spiceworks in a Domain, so using a Domain Administrator account to authenticate Spiceworks (whether it is recommended or not) is best left to someone else to answer.

As far as another site and VLAN, there are a couple of options available that may help you with this.

One option would be for the systems that switch between sites is using the Spiceworks Agent, which is installed on the computer, does the scanning on the computer, then reports back to the Central Installation.

Another option for the other site would be to setup a Remote Collector on it, which scans that site and reports back to the Central Installation. Then you wouldn’t need to scan it with the Central Install. Depending on how well Spiceworks is scanning this VLAN and remote site now, this may be an option:

They are making some changes with the dynamic IPs and changing in 7.5, which is in Beta now, so hopefully when that is final, that should help. In the meantime, maybe someone else has some suggestions.

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Have the machines ever scanned and been inventoried?

If not I have a few tricks up my sleeve too, aside form the posts V_S has given.

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I have some that have been scanned and some that cannot be scanned. Any tips are welcomed and greatly appreciated.

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Make sure file and printer sharing is enabled

Run a Command Prompt as Administrator on the machine that is failing, and enter / paste the following (without quotes):

“netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=“windows management instrumentation (WMI)” new enable=Yes”

Import the attached reg file on the machine not scanning

post results

Spiceworks_UAC_remote_allow.reg (167 Bytes)

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run the WMI firewall rule even if you have it disabled

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Thank you much for your help V_S. I will definitely look into those options. I did not know that was an option. I came into this job just 6 moths ago and rarely have time to just research the systems we use. Mostly I am learning on the fly.

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2 other things I should add:

This sentence should have had a third option:

“I am unclear as to how much was poor implementation of Spiceworks, how much might be Spiceworks shortcomings, or how much is my own unfamiliarity.”

Also, in regards to scanning machines, using group policy is not really an option. Someone incorrectly configured a Spiceworks firewall group policy which turned on the firewalls on all of our servers and brought our network down because they could no longer talk to each other. I would have to have to be able to provide some unequivocal proof that this would not happen again to be able to use group policy.

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I think you should check out V_S’s recommendations. The Unknowns Tool should help you figure out where the problems lie. If its that the firewall needs to be disabled via GPOs, I’d suggest configuring it exactly like Rod recommended. FWIW: If you configure it like Rod suggested, I can guarantee it won’t bring your network down. I don’t know if I’m an “unequivocal” source or not :slight_smile:

Lastly, for the machines moving from one VLAN to another, if you don’t want to put a Spiceworks Remote Collector on that VLAN, your best bet of scanning those machines will be the Remote Agent.

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Sounds like someone just didn’t really know as much as they should about GPO and pushed out a settings change without properly testing it first.

GPO is a very powerful and significantly helpful tool, when used properly and tested beforehand.

One bad experience with GPO shouldn’t be a reason to entirely forbid global use of it, in my opinion.

I would say that a bit more experience and WHOLE LOT more testing should be done before arbitrarily pushing them out in a production environment.

There’s a whole Active Directory & GPO group here in Spiceworks that can help with such things as well:

When you have time to test out some of the previous suggestions, post back and let us know how it’s going.

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One thing I should point out, if you’re using 7.4.0099, the Spiceworks Agent may have some communication issues that they are working on fixing as we speak. Whether this is only specific to an upgrade from a previous version, or also a fresh Agent install, I can’t specifically say, but they are working on a standalone Agent or full Spiceworks update to fix it Soon™

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