Finally solved it, helped by the evidence I recently added to the question:
netsh http show iplist
IP addresses present in the IP listen list:
-------------------------------------------
127.0.0.1
On systems where this was working, that list was empty. This seemed rather counter-intuitive to me at first. Nevertheless, I gave this a go:
> netsh http delete iplisten ipaddress=127.0.0.1
Immediately after, I notice this output from netstat
:
>netstat -anp tcp
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 0.0.0.0:135 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:3389 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:5985 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:47001 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49152 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49153 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49154 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49155 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49175 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49179 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 0.0.0.0:49190 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 10.115.63.107:139 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
TCP 10.115.63.107:3389 10.115.13.25:64873 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.115.63.107:49235 192.168.40.146:445 ESTABLISHED
TCP 10.115.63.107:49291 192.168.40.45:8014 ESTABLISHED
TCP 169.254.34.30:139 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING
And indeed, WinRM works like it should.
I surmise, via testing, that if no HTTP listener is configured, then all HTTP listeners will bind to the default entity: 0.0.0.0
. Because a loopback address was configured as a listener address, the listener was binding to this address instead.
At some point, I must have taken some action that caused this configuration, though I'm not sure how. At any rate, it's working fine now. Thanks all.
Best Answer
There are many posts about this exact error message. Here are some excerpts that should help! #LMGTFY :)
From a Symantec KB: https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH200047.html
From a Microsoft forum: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/e5f8cfee-d4a6-4e5c-9baf-e8a8a67d9316/winrm-access-denied
We do have another unanswered question about this. Maybe they can be merged: Enabling Powershell Remoting, Access is denied?