Microsoft SCCM Question

Anyone use Microsoft SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) in their daily job? Uncle Google doesn't have this answer for me.

I'm using its features to push-distribute software installs to client systems on the network.

I create PACKAGE A, create a distribution, make an advertisement, and it starts on the target system.

But PACKAGE A has errors in the way it is distributed and it never actually installs. It also does not report back a failure, so it just “sticks” like it’s started installing and never finished. Client computer isn’t *doing* anything, the install program is not running. It's just that the logs show the installer started, but they don't show the installer exited.

I create PACKAGE B, create a distribution, make an advertisement, and…



But it’s not actually running at all! It just messed up and didn’t report back its failure.

There are no options I can find to make it “skip” or “continue” past the malfunctioning advertisement. So I delete all advertisements and packages and distributions for PACKAGE A. I see that PACKAGE A is now gone from the list of advertisements on that client. Try everything again, and…

Same error!

How do I make SCCM just ignore that one advertisement and go on to the next one?

ANSWER:

REBOOT THE CLIENT COMPUTER.

Arg.

tanstaafl.

C'mon Tony, that's what they teach you on day one at computer school!!!!

I was imagining that I was in a situation where I was in a larger organization where I couldn't actually go around talking to the client machine owners and telling them to reboot.

There's gotta be a non-reboot solution there, but for now, the reboot solved my immediate problem.

I've read the entire thread, so I know you've fixed it, but...



Worse than that; I write code that talks to it.



You probably should have seen something in the status messages for that advertisement. Did you look in the advertisement status node?

Beyond that, did you look in the log files on that client? They're in C:\Windows\System32\CCM\Logs. I can never remember which ones you need to look in, though.



How did you verify this? Did you actually look on the client, or did you just confirm the list of advertisements for the relevant collection?



Wait for a policy refresh.

Yes. That's where I see that it started the installation but never finished the installation of PACKAGE A.



Mostly irrelevant. I know the installation of PACKAGE A failed. I don't care why at this point, all I care about is that I want SCCM to forget about it and go on with installing PACKAGE B.



Right click on collection, press PROPERTIES, press ADVERTISEMENTS tab. Before I deleted the advertisement, I could see it in the tab. After deleting the advertisement, it was gone from that tab.




Induced multiple policy refreshes by right-clicking on the collection, pressing SCCM CONFIGMGR TOOLS, and pressing REFRESH MACHINE POLICIES. Each time it gave me the same 10037 error.

Anyway, the reboot worked, and any desire to solve the problem with more finesse than that is merely an academic curiosity at this point.

I despise how many Windows networking problems are "solved" by "wait".

Oh, I guarantee that SCCM would make you despise Microsoft even more. Everything in that program is harder, and involves more steps, than it needs to be.

In this case, it's not a network problem. It's SCCM attempting to be scalable by having the client only pull fresh policy on a schedule. In this case, you just have to wait. Even if you manually trigger a refresh, it still doesn't do it immediately.

That is, in fact, exactly what I meant, and exactly what I hate.

It's the same for AD, DNS, Exchange, et al. As an admin with more work to do than I really have time for, "wait" is a despicable answer.