Client Management Suite

Hello,

Our company has over 3500 7.1 Symantec Management Agents installed on various (all windows 7) systems, but there are about thirty (30) what i call bad agents.

Whenever there's a deployment, these will always fail and when I connect to them the SMA service is either not started (not visible in the bottom right hand side corner) or has three (3) instances running which disappear when I attempt to click on them.

I have reinstalled these agents over 10 times using aexagentutil /uninstallagents /clean and then a push for the Notification Server, which fixes the agent for about 10 minutes, which is luckily enough to get my deployment to that computer done.

However, it is very frustrating that every time I deploy software I have to spend multiple hours reinstalling all the bad agents.

Is there another way of reinstalling the agent that might provide a permanent solution? I'd hate to have to reimage every single one of those computers as they're working just fine other than that.

Thanks,

Thijn

Hi,

Seems like SMA crashes on the "bad agents". May you check directory C:\ProgramData\Symantec\Symantec Agent\CrashDumps and if there is a file with .ez extension - share it along with the logs directory?

Thank you,

Alex.

Thijn,

I occasionally see similar issues and when I still see the agent closing itself or crashing after reinstalling, it is normally something wrong with WIndows.

Most of the tiem for me it is that WMI is corrupt or broken.

Try copying and pasting the code below to a batch file and runnig it as admin on one of the affected machines, then reboot it

@echo off
sc config winmgmt start= disabled
net stop winmgmt /y
%systemdrive%
cd %windir%\system32\wbem
for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.dll') do regsvr32 /s %%s
wmiprvse /regserver
winmgmt /regserver
sc config winmgmt start= auto
net start winmgmt
for /f %%s in ('dir /s /b *.mof *.mfl') do mofcomp %%s

You can also turn on verbose logging for the agent and start it and wait for it to crash and you might be able to get a reason on why it is crashing.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO2451

Hope this helps,

Clay

Thanks for the suggestions Alex and Clay. I tried Clays solution first and ran the script/rebooted the computer. Sadly, the issue seems to persists. The Agent remains active for about a minute after which multiple agents pop up in the bottom right hand side corner that all disappear when I hover my mouse over it. Three minutes later the agent is fully terminated again.

Alex, I have attached the last 2 .ez files and the logs, hope there's something we can find.

Thanks,

Thijn

Attachment(s)

logs_ez_files.zip   29.43 MB 1 version

Hi Thijn,

Thank you for the dumps and logs. Per initial assessment this issue has been fixed in one of the roll-ups for the 7.1.SP2.MP1.

I wondering, could it be that you have an old (7.1.SP2 GA) version of SMA in DS image used for deploying and "bad" clients do not receive SMA upgrade policy by some reason and continue to work with old agent? That might explain why this issue reproducible only on several clients and does not occur on the rest.

Latest rollup v11 for 7.1.SP2 Mp1: https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.howto81832.html

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HTH,

Alex.

Hey Alex,

I checked some of our agents, and it seems they're all running on version 7.1.15400.8400 (both the working and bad ones) while roll-up 11 has version 7.1.15495.8495 available.
 

I will see if I can get that update installed and report back with a status update.

Thanks for the help,

Thijn

Hi Thijn,

No prob :) 

You may manually run "\\nsserver\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86\NS Client Package\AeXNSC.exe" on one or two clients with crashing SMA just to check quickly if upgrade will change the situation. Also, please check the rest of SMA plugins' versions as there were stability fixes in plugins in the rollups for 7.1.SP2.

Thank you,

Alex.