Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

During an installation of SP4 of the Symantec Management Platform the installation program "hung" (I believe in step 3 of 17).  After waiting about 5 hours, I tried using the cancel button in the Installation Manager, but the only response was something like "an installation or upgrade is in progress, please wait until it completes".  I finally ended up using task manager to terminate the process.  I went back in to the Installation Manager to try again, and after clearing off enough space (including all the logs of the failed installation) to pass the 5 GB minimum space requirement to pass the "readiness test" the installation fails immediately with "Install could not continue because the web service was not available".  When I start the Altiris Service manually I get an EventID 1000 in the application event log:

Faulting application aexsvc.exe, version 7.0.7416.0, stamp 4b68cb9b, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4480, stamp 49c51f0a, debug? 0, fault address 0x0000bef7.

The Installed products list of the Symantec Installation Manager still shows SMP SP2 HF2 installed, and the only selectable button is Repair; Modify and Uninstall are not selectable.  Selecting repair fails with the same "install could not continue because the web service was not available".  I've rebooted the server, tried the above multiple times, and it always fails with the same error.  One thing I just noticed is that the application error indicates a version of 7.0.7416.0 and the Installation Manager indicates that I have 7.0.5243 installed. 

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

Thanks,
Mike Ball
Central Michigan University

If so, do you have the latest SIM installer? Check the SIM Logs, do they say anything? One issue I found that is similar is KB4978.

Here are the steps I used to fix the problem;  I can't guarantee they were all needed, but this is what I did to get things running:

1) Used Add/Remove programs to uninstall and reinstall ASP.Net (with a reboot in between)
2) Ran altiris_ns_7_0_kb49811_sp4_x86.msi out of Program Files\Altiris\Symantec Installation Manager\installs\Altiris, this ran to completion but it took about 3 hours)
3) Started the Installation Manager; it indicated that I needed to install SP4 for SMP, so I did.  This time there was no web server error and it ran to completion in about 15 minutes.
4) After a reboot, everything worked...

Can't really explain it, but at this point it doesn't matter.

Mike Ball
Central Michigan University