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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T01:09:00+00:00

I’ve run into a sticky problem using WMI (via win32com) in Python under Windows

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I’ve run into a sticky problem using WMI (via win32com) in Python under Windows 7. I haven’t been able to find a resolution for this.

Here is my code:

from win32com.client import GetObject

def get_printers(computer):
    """ Get a list of printers from the specified computer name. """
    wmiservice = GetObject(r"winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" + computer + r"\root\cimv2")
    return wmiservice.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Printer")

for printer in get_printers("ps2"):
    print printer.Name

This works great under Windows XP. But fails miserably if I run this under Windows 7:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\Pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 325, in RunScript
    exec codeObject in __main__.__dict__
  File "C:\Python27\sample\temp2.py", line 8, in <module>
    for printer in get_printers("ps2"):
  File "C:\Python27\sample\temp2.py", line 5, in get_printers
    wmiservice = GetObject(r"winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" + computer + r"\root\cimv2")
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 72, in GetObject
    return Moniker(Pathname, clsctx)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 87, in Moniker
    moniker, i, bindCtx = pythoncom.MkParseDisplayName(Pathname)
com_error: (-2147024891, 'Access is denied.', None, None)

I tried everything I can think of in Win 7: disabled firewall (no virus scanner), ensured DCOM is enabled, ensured WMI is enabled, and disabled UAC. Any help would be greately appreciated.

Note: I’m using Python 2.7.1 with pywin32 build 215, under Windows 7 Ultimate x86 (and Windows XP SP3).

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As it turns out, the problem was not related to DCOM/WMI/UAC/Firewall. What was really suprising was that the Win 7 PC had nothing reported in it’s event log at all when these failures happened.

    What I noticed was that, as in the original problem, outgoing connections from Win 7 reported Access Denied. But I also noticed that connections incoming to the Win 7 PC (same python script as above) reported the RPC Server as being unavailable. Other PC’s (not the Win 7) PC would also report a kerberos error (ID 4) in the event log.

    The problem turned out that there was something funky with active directory on our domain, specifically with this Win 7 PC. For some reason active directory incorrectly thought there were multiple PCs with this name – this is the source of the kerberos event log.

    The fix that worked was: taking the Win 7 PC off the domain, changing the PC to a new name, then putting the PC back on the domain.

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