How to Enable WinRM to Allow Remote PowerShell Management

If you try making a remote PowerShell connection to a computer but the WinRM is not enabled, you’ll receive the error message in the screenshot below.

If you receive this error message, use the three steps below to enable WinRM and configure the necessary Windows Firewall rules.

Step 1: Set Network Connection Profile to Domain or Private

Part of the process of enabling WinRM is to configure WinRM firewall exception.

Unfortunately, the configuration will not configure firewall exceptions if any of the network interface connection connection profile is set to Public.

To fix this problem, you must configure all network interfaces on the remote computer to either Domain or Private.

If the computer you’re remoting to is joined to the domain, the network connection connection profile will be set to Domain. In that case, you can skip this section.

But, if you need to set the network connection to Private for a non-domain-joined computer, follow these steps:

1. Open PowerShell as administrator. Then, get the name of the network interface with the command below:

Get-NetAdapter

The command displays all network adapters on the computer, including their Name. My screenshot below shows two network adapters – “Ethernet 2” and “Ethernet.”

In this example, I’ll be configuring the “Ethernet” network card.

2. Finally, set the network connection profile to Private with the command below:

I used the InterfaceIndex of the network card to identify it.

Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 13 -NetworkCategory Private

Here are the commands – to confirm that the connection profile has changed, I executed the Get-NetConnectionProfile command.

Step 2: Enable WinRM with the WinRM quickconfig Command

The fastest way to enable WinRM and open the necessary Windows Firewall ports is by running the “winrm quickconfig” command.

To run this command, open CMD as administrator. Then, proceed with the steps below.

1. Run the “winrm quickconfig” command.

winrm quickconfig

2. You’ll be prompted to confirm that you’re happy to start the WinRM service. Type y and press the enter key.

3. In the next step, the process will prompt you to confirm “Enabling the WinRM firewall exception.” Type y and press enter.

The process is very quick and you should receive a confirmation that the configuration is completed.

Step 3: Add Both Computers to the TrustedHosts Lists

This final step is required if the authentication scheme on the computers is different from Kerberos, or if the client computer is not joined to a domain.

So, if you’re configuring a non-domain-joined computer, you must add the source and destination computers to the TrustedHosts.

Open PowerShell as administrator and run the commands below:

The following commands must be executed on the source and destination Windows computers. In my sample command below, 192.168.0.58 is the IP address of the remote computer. So, I executed the first command on the source computer (the computer I am making the PowerShell connection from). The second command is executed on the remote computer – 192.168.0.56 is the IP address of the source computer.

winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="192.168.0.58"}'
winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="192.168.0.56"}' 

Conclusion

Configuring WinRM is a prerequisite to making a remote connection with PowerShell. As I discussed in this guide, this is a three-step process.

Firstly, you must set the network connection profile for the interface on the remote computer to Domain or Private. Additionally, enable WinRM by running the “WinRM quickconfig” command.

Finally, you must add the source and destination computers to the TrustedHosts lists on each computer.

Once you finish these three configurations, you can make a remote PowerShell connection using the New-PSSession or Enter-PSSession commands.

Thank you for reading!

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