Summary: I want to be able to monitor the computers on my network, but don't need it to be automated. We're too small to purchase anything like MOM, but too big to do anything manually (~100 machines in two locations). I just keep running into issues, and was wondering if there's a master list of Group Policy settings I can distribute to my environment to get Remote Powershell working.

Environment: Our AD network is pretty mixed. The end users have XP SP3, Win 7, and Win 7 x64. The servers include Win2k3 SP2, Win2k8, Win2k8 x64, Win2k8 R2, and Win2k8 R2 x64.

Details: I'm trying to get it to work with Remote Powershell, but I run into errors like the following:

Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The WinRM 
client cannot process the request. Default authentication may be used with an IP 
address under the following conditions: the transport is HTTPS or the 
destination is in the TrustedHosts list, and explicit credentials are provided. 
Use winrm.cmd to configure TrustedHosts. Note that computers in the TrustedHosts 
list might not be authenticated. For more information on how to set TrustedHosts 
run the following command: winrm help config. For more information, see the 
about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.

        + CategoryInfo          : OpenError: (:) [], PSRemotingTransportException
        + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionStateBroken

Then I go to the computer (Win2k3 SP2 server) and run winrm quickconfig per the recommendations via google, and it says:

Make these changes [y/n]? y

WinRM has been updated to receive requests.

WinRM service started.
WSManFault
Message = The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the 
request. Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting 
requests. Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service 
running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is 
the WinRM service, run the following command on the destination to analyze and 
configure the WinRM service: "winrm quickconfig".

Error number:  -2144108526 0x80338012
The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the request. 
Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting 
requests. Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service 
running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is 
the WinRM service, run the following command on the destination to analyze and 
configure the WinRM service: "winrm quickconfig".

That's right. It tells me to remedy my winrm quickconfig failure by running winrm quickconfig. I don't want to band-aid this project one google search at a time. I'm sure there is a step-by-step tutorial out there on how to set up a network for powershell remote administration. Does anyone know of one? Books are acceptable.

Thanks in advance! I didn't think my question would get this long.