Remember to Update Your WMI Filter in GPOs!

Recently, after I successfully deployed a GPO for Windows 8, another of my team-mate told me that 802.1x GPO does not work for Windows 8 machine. So, fun time – troubleshooting begins!

All settings looks fine on the GPOs from GPMC. But I noticed something… the GPO containing the network setting for 802.1x has a WMI filter that targets ONLY Windows 7! So, what does that mean? That GPO will not be applied to the Windows 8 Client machine! Haha!

The reason why it was there initially is to prevent people from joining Windows XP to domain and get the 802.1x settings. Never realised that it will have some impact now after 2 years.

So, after I removed the WMI filter from the GPO, problem solved!

I actually take some time to comb through the whole domain for other GPOs that were applied with the Windows 7 WMI filter.

So, do we need WMI filter still? Yes. we will still need it. And let me take this chance to share with you all on how to prepare the WMI query command string:

First, lets have a quick overview on various common product version / producttype / OSArchitecture Value

Operating System	Version	ProductType	OSArchitecture
Windows XP	5.1%	1	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows Server 2003 (R2 too)	5.2%	2 or 3	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows Vista	6.0%	1	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows Server 2008	6.0%	2 or 3	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows 7	6.1%	1	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 R2	6.1%	2 or 3	64-bit
Windows 8	6.2%	1	32-bit or 64-bit
Windows Server 2012	6.2%	2 or 3	64-bit

Product Type Meaning

Client versions of Windows	1
Server versions of Windows that are operating as a domain controller	2
Server versions of Windows that are not operating as a domain controller (typically referred to as member servers)	3

So for Windows 8 64 bit OS, the WMI query string will be

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like “6.2%” AND ProductType=”1” AND OSArchitecture = “64-bit“

For Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (32 bit or 64 bit), the WMI query string will be

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like “6.%” AND ProductType=”1”

For Windows Server 2012, the WMI query string will be

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like “6.2%” AND (ProductType=”2” or ProductType=”3“)

Hope this helps!

And once again, please remember to update your WMI filter in your GPO! Else when you deploy Windows 8, no GPO will be applied! Cheers!~