WMI Error Unable to connect to WMI locally – “Win32 The system cannot find the path specified”

Trevor Sullivan (@pcgeek86 - http://trevorsullivan.net/) pointed out this post on WMI.  I have run into a few issues with WMI returning this error and wanted to note it for posterity:

Unable to connect to WMI locally – “Win32: The system cannot

find the path specified” In the end, this case points out that it boils down to a registry key being of the wrong type.  I may start building some checks into my scripts that hit WMI to see if any such errors exist.  Low overhead and a good sanity check.  Why not?