The RPC Server Is Unavailable in Windows 10/11 (How To Fix It)

The following error might appear when you try to run a CMD or PowerShell command on a remote computer.

ERROR: The RPC server is unavailable.

I got this error on Windows 10 when I tried to run the tasklist command on a remote computer.

We can fix this error by allowing the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) feature from Windows Firewall.

The following error may also occur when a Windows command (e.g., tasklist, taskkill) tries to connect to a remote system.

ERROR: The user name or password is incorrect.

We can solve this error by disabling the UAC remote restrictions in the Windows Registry.

Allow Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Feature from Windows Firewall

To solve the The RPC server is unavailable error, you need to allow Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) feature from the Windows Firewall. We can easily do this by running a single PowerShell command.

Right-click the Windows Start button and choose Windows PowerShell (Admin) if you are on Windows 10 or Windows Terminal (Admin) if you are on Windows 11.

On the PowerShell console, execute the following command:

Enable-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)"

That should fix our problem. You can disable Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) feature by running the following command:

Disable-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)"

The user name or password is incorrect

This error happens when a command line tool such as taskkill attempts to connect to a remote computer.

To fix this issue, we need to disable UAC remote restrictions. We can do that by running the following PowerShell command:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" -Name "LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy" -Value 1

That should do it. If you want to re-enable UAC remote restrictions, run the following command:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" -Name "LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy" -Value 0

Also remember to use an Administrator account when you run a command on a remote Windows system.

And that brings an end to this troubleshooting guide.