So I recently came across this issue after rolling out Trend to a new Data Protection Manager (DPM) instance whereby I couldn’t create new protection groups as it was generating the following error –

Create protection group: ###### System failed:
Error 33507: DPM could not execute a WMI query. The query either returned an error or an empty result.
Recommended action: Retry the operation.

Luckily it proved to be a fairly simple issue to resolve.

The issue was caused by Trend Antivirus seemingly blocking the WMI filter which can be resolved by disabling the filter, this may require you to go into Safe Mode on the DPM server in order to add the required registry key.

1. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TmFilter\Parameters” using the Registry Editor.
2. Add a DWORD (32 Bit) called ‘BypassDPMfilter with a value of 1.
3. Restart the affected machine.

Once the machines started up you should then be able to create new Protection Groups.