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 was’t ready to risk screwing things up. It’s possible we would have ended up here together, but… here’s what finally worked for me.
WARNING: This was my solution to my problem. Since Windows source files are involved, it’s 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: “%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem\wmic.exe” logicaldisk where DeviceID=‘C:’ 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 “C:” drive using LOGICALDISK, which is simply an alias for “Select * from Win32_LogicalDisk”.
I opened an elevated command prompt to see if I could run it myself.
This didn’t work:
wmic logicaldisk where DeviceID=‘C:’ get FreeSpace
This did work:
wmic path Win32_LogicalDisk where DeviceID=‘C:’ get FreeSpace
I looked at my list of aliases (“wmic /?”) to see that LOGICALDISK wasn’t 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: “net stop winmgmt”
- Rename or move the “C:\Windows\System32\wbem\Repository” folder (a file permission change may be needed)
- Restart winmgmt service: “net start winmgmt”
- After “waiting a bit” (abt 3 mins for me, though I’m 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 isn’t used by installer packages much anymore. WMIC was deprecated by Windows in 2012 (being replaced by , and it isn’t used by installer packages much anymore (having been replaced by PowerShell’s Get-WmiObject and later Get-CimInstance).