WMI Error preventing DFS from Replication

I am trying to use DFS to replicate a folder. When I set it up, everything appears OK. However, it never replicates. If I Create a Health Report, it says that the replicated folder has an invalid local path and "Cannot access the local WMI repository."  The local folder is valid. I run WMIDiag utility on the server in question. It gives one error shown below:

46702 11:41:05 (1) !! ERROR: WMI CONNECTION errors occured for the following namespaces: .................................................. 1 ERROR(S)!
46703 11:41:05 (0) ** - Root/aspnet, 0x8004100E - (WBEM_E_INVALID_NAMESPACE) Namespace specified cannot be found.

Would this prevent replication? Is this likely the root of the issue? How to correct it?  Thank you.