TLDR: My solution was to rebuild the WMI repository. It took about 60 seconds (after several hours of searching and experimenting).
I called Waves tech support, who suspected it was either a permissions issue or the Windows WMI was broken. We unsuccessfully went down the permissions path together, including re-installing under a newly-created administrator account. I also tried the offline installer package. His next suggestion involved backing up and restoring Windows, at which point I bowed out. My PC has 4 hard drives, RAID, etc., and since Waves Central was the only software I had any issues with - I wasât ready to risk screwing things up. Itâs possible we would have ended up here together, but⊠hereâs what finally worked for me.
WARNING: This was my solution to my problem. Since Windows source files are involved, itâs possible (though not likely) you employing my solution could make your problem worse.
I eventually found the Waves Central log file, which included an error revealing the issue:
C:\Users<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Waves Audio\Waves Central\Logs\Waves-Central.log
WinNodeDisk::getFreeSpaceGBSync Failed
Command failed: â%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem\wmic.exeâ logicaldisk where DeviceID=âC:â get FreeSpace
logicaldisk - Alias not found.
Apparently, in order to determine the available space, Waves runs a command that using a built-in windows tool called WMIC. Specifically, they check the âC:â drive using LOGICALDISK, which is simply an alias for âSelect * from Win32_LogicalDiskâ.
I opened an elevated command prompt to see if I could run it myself.
This didnât work:
wmic logicaldisk where DeviceID=âC:â get FreeSpace
This did work:
wmic path Win32_LogicalDisk where DeviceID=âC:â get FreeSpace
I looked at my list of aliases (âwmic /?â) to see that LOGICALDISK wasnât there. In fact, the list of aliases was alphabetical, and I had nothing above the letter F.
- sfc /scannow reported no issues
- trying several rebuild/reset winmgmt commands did nothing
I eventually rebuilt the WMI repository following these steps:
- Stop the winmgmt service using an elevated command line: ânet stop winmgmtâ
- Rename or move the âC:\Windows\System32\wbem\Repositoryâ folder (a file permission change may be needed)
- Restart winmgmt service: ânet start winmgmtâ
- After âwaiting a bitâ (abt 3 mins for me, though Iâm not sure it was necessary), reboot the PC
After rebooting, a newly created repository folder was present (including the missing aliases), and Wave Central was able to properly determine the available space.
Note: I have no idea how my alias list became truncated, and I have no idea how long it was like that. My suspicion is that it had been like that for quite a while, but never caused me grief because it isnât used by installer packages much anymore. WMIC was deprecated by Windows in 2012 (being replaced by , and it isnât used by installer packages much anymore (having been replaced by PowerShellâs Get-WmiObject and later Get-CimInstance).