Automatic Refresh Failed

Today we are going to see how to resolve the situation where server gives a red flag with error "Automatic Refresh Failed." and "Server manager is collecting Inventory Data. The wizard will be available after data collection finishes."

Generaly this error appears when you try to add/remove roles from server manager.

So on my Server 2k12 which is installed on virtual machine, when I tried to add roles on it, it gave me the following error : "Server manager is collecting Inventory Data. The wizard will be available after data collection finishes."

Further when I tried to refresh the server manager, it shows "Refresh Failed". No metter how many times you try to refresh it, the count of failure here increases with each click. And when you click on the Red Flag here, it shows the Automatic Refresh Failed. So this is a frustrating situation where you wont be able to add/remove roles or features or any other activity on server manager.

So in order to resolve this issue, open command prompt with Administrative Rights. You can do that by right clicking on CMD and then click on "Run as Administrator". Change the default directory to

C:\Windows\System32

Once you do that, type the following command.

dir /a /S *.MOF

This command will search all the .mof files. It is the file format for Windows Management Object files. WMI data (such as definitions of namespaces, classes, instances, or providers) are sometimes represented in MOF files.

Now change the directory path to wbem by typing CD Wbem and then cd AutoRecover.

now type this simple command

for /f %s in ('dir /b *.mof *.mfl') do mofcomp %s

and hit enter.

It will Recover all the .mof files that have been currupted and created an issue with Server Manager. It will take some time to recover all the files.

Once it gets completed, type Exit to close the Command Prompt.

Now go to the server manager and click on Refresh Icon and then click on Red Flag to check the status. You can see the server refresh is in progress instead of giving an error "refresh failed".

Now it will take some time to refresh the server and finally without giving us an error of Server Refresh failed, it successfully refresh the server, which in result allows you to install Roles and Features on server.