Endpoint Protection

With SEPM v12.1.6 released yesterday, and I am currently downloading them to give it a test on the test network before going live. And I thought I'd start this off with a new discussion about SEPM v12.1.6.

Has anyone tried it yet? First thoughts? Found any NEW bugs with v12.1.6 (SEPM/SEP)? Any issue with upgrading from previous version (mine is 12.1.5) or as new install?

Share your experience!

Not even attempting until I get feedback from community members. This will be a good thread to keep open and running for feedback.

So I've had a handful of 2008 R2 Servers that would not take RU5 (infamous 1603 error)...so far all of these machines have taken RU6 with no complaints. Yippee!!

I've done upgrades from RU5 to RU6, and fresh installs of RU6 on both Desktops and Servers (~20 clients thus far)...so far no issues.

So while it's not the best suggestion, about 1/2 of the 20 clients I mentioned above are pointing at our DEV SEPM running RU6, and about half are pointing at our PROD SEPM farm running RU5.

As happy as I've been with RU5, I have even higher aspirations for RU6.

I'll post more as things progress...

-Mike

One of the major thing to be aware that SEP v12.1.6 no longer supports Server 2003 and Windows XP. I do know a lot of people are still using this so this might be of an impact for them.

However they can still use the old client (i.e. v12.1.5) with the new SEPM v12.1.6 until these cliets are upgraded to the latest operating system.

Hello,

Lots of fixes and lots of new features.

SEP 12.1 RU6 includes the additonal following support:

• Windows 10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.0 and 7.1
• Oracle Linux (OEL) 6U5

Check this Article on Windows 10 -

Windows 10 computers do not boot after installing Endpoint Protection 12.1.6

This issue occurs if your version of Windows 10 is a prerelease version, and you have configured Early Launch Anti-Malware (ELAM) to use only known good drivers. The SymELAM definitions that ship with 12.1.6 do not include the certificates available with prerelease versions of Windows 10.

No new Bugs as what I see.... !!!

We plan to begin our testing next week.

That said, the last "closest to stable" release of SEP 12.1 was RU2. Every release since then, I'm sorry to say has cause MORE issues than it's solved, RU5 especially., but even the many RU4 variants were a problem.

We're very hopeful that RU6 will be the first release since RU2 to warrant a mass upgrade on our part, by which we don't mean SEPMs and GUPs (that goes without saying), we mean have all our customers update all their SEP Agents. To date, we upgrade the back-ends, but are less compelled to update Agents unless good reason is able to be justified...far too many bugs the last few years.

Wish everyone luck with their testing, and if you hit something major, please share here.

Updated SEPM from 12.1.5 to 12.1.6. Lot of bugs are gone.

Now updating a couple of clients. No problems so far.

Update 28-5-2015:

Sometimes the client list doesn't show up in SEPM.

clicking the TAB, clientgroup or Refresh triggers the rebuild of the list.

Its irritating.

This issue started in 12.1.5. Drives me crazy.

Let's be honest, the performance of nearly all aspects of the SEPM GUI (via local native or web-based) has always been poor. But yeah, this has gotten worse. The SEPM has always had bad refresh defects. The Sygate code needs to be moved on.

Waiting for the day the re-worked GUI arrives one day. My feedback has always been, "make it like McAfee's ePO and you've now caught up to the benchmark, but that's enough, innovate and take it further". Could be waiting for a very long time.....here's hoping.

And I thought it was because the server was slow with refreshing the listing of clients! Glad it's not only me then...

I've noticed one problem so far. I have some new Windows 7 x64 clients that are unmanaged, If I install 12.1.6 that status in the client always says Symantec Endpoint Protection requires a restart no matter how many times I restart. If I upgrade to 12.1.6 from a previous version I don't get this warning.

Where in the Release Notes does it state Windows 10 is supported, I can't find it?

Thanks.

It doesn't. It's not supported.

During the Beta Testing, Windows 10 was part of the testing, but due to some issue with it and with the time running out, W10 support was dropped at RTM.

I think it will be part of v12.1.7 in the future.

I thought I just couldn't find it, so after all this conjecture that .6 was going to support 10 they roll out and don't?  Are there plans to before July 29th when WIN10 is pushed out?  

Until Symantec provides better roadmap to WIN10 my environment is staying .5.

So business customers of Symantec are handcuffed from upgarding to WIN10 until Symantec gets around to providing a SEP client?  Not thinking my CIO will like the email I'm composing.

Any thoughts on this guys? It says that the  XP and 2003 is still supported

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH230602.html

Interesting, and the article is last updated 2nd June, so it looks like they have backtracked on this.

It did show that XP and Server 2003 wasn't supported previously...

Yes 12.1 still supports them for now. Hopefully people get off of them though soon.

SEPM 12.1 RU6 is the last release to support Win XP and Win 2K3

"Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.6 is the last release to support the installation of Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager on any version of Windows XP/Windows Server 2003, or to any 32-bit operating system. This upcoming change does not affect the Symantec Endpoint Protection client."

To me that reads that you won't be able to install the SEPM on XP/2003 in the future.

We have problem in in the live update so we upgraded 12.1.5 to 12.1.6. We have 4 SEPM and all are not updating. So we try to upgrade 1 of our SEPM 12.1.5 to 12.1.6 because we thought that this will solve the issue and still not updating. We have contacted the symantec support and up to now we are still on support. 

It doesn't work on Win10, at least NTP part. Error  - firewall driver is not loaded. Repair\reinstall does not help. After uninstalling NTP, client icon becomes green. But client is not visible in SEPM, only if you use search option.

The same situation on all machines, we have tried.

We've also updated several SEP clients running Windows 8.1 -no problems so far.

Windows 10 has not been released by Microsoft, and therefore is not supported by SEP.

Upgraded to 12.1.6 from 12.1.4 on win7 machines.  Seeing issues on Shutdown.  Machines are hanging on Shutting Down...  Issue started right after upgrading to 12.1.6.  Issue also seems to be sporatic, doesn't occur on every machine, and doesn't occur on every shutdown.  Have to do a hard shutdown to get the machine to shutdown.  When Windows starts back up, it doesn't complain about being shutdown improperly.  Have an open ticket with Symantec Support, but it has been 3 days with not one actual support interaction.

Support telle me all the problems with 12.1.5 are only fixed by upgrading to 12.1.6 for Server 2003.

During upgrade of clients Windows 2003 Servers to 12.1.6, some machine (3 out of about 100 so far) loop on Windows Server boot. Right after booting Windows, logo appears and seems to be loading windows when the screen goes blank and system reboots.

After booting into safe mode...

Tried to disable services for Symantec, no permissions because otehr proceeses arent running it appears.

SMC -stop does not help

Only way I could get the server to boot again was to (taskmgr)  kill process ccsvchist.exe until it no longer appears, making sure that smc.exe process and smcgui.exe process was not running, then going tinto this directory . C:\Program Files\Symantec AntiVirus\12.1.6318.6100.105\Bin and rename smc.exe to smc.exe1 and smcgui.exe to smcgui.exe1 to keep it from loading on bootup.

Any thoughts?
Rod

12.1.6 MP2 was just released today.

You may want to give 12.1.6 MP2 a try as it was released yesterday.

Also, in case you're not aware, Microsoft is no longer supporting Server 2003 and has not sicne July 2015 so you may want to set up a new server with a clean install of 12.1.6 and migrate all clients across to it. This way, it's all supported and more up to date. :)

Of course, it depends on your current setup, but thought I'd mention this.