Invalid HDD Serial or Dongle - Rebuilding WMIC Repo

Notes from Mermaid Fish Bar

Site had this issue but also other windows functionality wasn't working (Start menu) when running wmic in cmd it was displaying a module error.

Ran sfc /scannow in administrator CMD and rebooted till after and then below steps worked.

If you are getting an 'Invalid HDD Serial or Dongle' error message on a previous working till, it would suggest that TP is unable to get the serial number of the HDD which it gets via WMIC

Note: This issue will most likely also change the TeamViewer ID

If you can't get onto the till, ask the site to read out the TeamViewer ID and random password (you may need to enable in settings)

Complete the below to rebuild the WMIC repo

If this is a case of:

• 'wmic diskdrive get serialnumber' is not showing any data or an error.
• Control Panel | System is showing "Not Available" next to items such as Processor or Installed Memory.

Then this may work. If the above is not the case, then don't proceed.

Take any backups you may need to in order to safeguard any program data etc that you may need to keep.

This fixed it for me, it may not fix it for you.

To manually rebuild the WMI service:

Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services

Scroll down until you find 'WIndows Management Instrumentation'.

If this service isn't running, that'll probably be your problem, start the service, restart the till and see if that makes a difference.

However, if it is running:

• Stop the service, take note of any other services that it also states will be stopped alongside the one you have selected. In my case it was just 'IP Helper'.
• Navigate to "C:\Windows\System32\wbem"
• Rename the repository folder to repository.old
• Start up the 'Windows Management Instrumentation' service once more.
• Start up any services (Such as 'IP Helper') that were stopped as a result of stopping the 'Windows Management Instrumentation' service in the first place.
• In the 'C:\Windows\System32\wbem' folder, a new repository folder should now be present, if it's not, restart the till. It will take a while to rebuild fully, maybe 5 minutes or so.
• Load up cmd prompt, enter in the earlier command 'wmic diskdrive get serialnumber', if you now get your serial number, happy days.
• Using the original network.buf file, start TouchPoint. after 20 secs or so, try '366453' to get the serial number, that should now be fine.

If it is still not working after that, you may need to reinstall Windows or will need to investigate further. But if the above is true (previous post) and Windows can't read your drive, it's a Windows issue