Have you tried CIM SDK? That should give you more information regarding hardware status.
Steve Jin, author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK, creator of VMware vSphere Java API (http://vijava.sf.net), blogger at http://www.doublecloud.org
Steve JIN
Author of VMware VI and vSphere SDK; Creator of open source VI Java API (http://vijava.sf.net); Blogger at http://www.doublecloud.org