Ted Pruitt

Another side question - do the clients no longer automatically update? Does this need to be a manual process now?

I had an odd issue with a laptop that required me to rejoin it to our domain - and as a part of that I went ahead and deleted it from the SmartDeploy console. Now it won't come back. I've checked and it pings in both directions. SmartDeploy Client is running. I removed and reinstalled the SmartDeploy Client, just to be safe. Anything else that could be a possibility? I'm stumped. Does it get marked as having been deleted somewhere and not allowed to come back? Maybe a database I have to remove a flag from or something? Any help would be appreciated.

For anyone else. Stopped the api service. Deleted the .lic file. Restarted the computer. Seems to have cleared it up.

I'm seeing this problem when just trying to go into the console. I'm on 3.0.1050 - so it isn't a version issue. And it won't even let me into the console to do anything, it just kicks me out. The system is on a wide-open internet connection with no filters or blocking - so what can be causing this? It's very inconvenient, I have a need to image a bunch of machines and I'm stuck.

Will do. Thanks Jeff.

OK - good to know - after imaging - it's set to Automatic, consistently. This is across 4 different images, deployed to 4 different types of machines (desktops, laptops and workstations.) So this is not isolated to one image. I've been setting it to manual to get the PC to talk to the console - I'll change it to Disabled. I'm not sure I understand how this is an issue with the image itself. Is the SmartDeploy services installed from the image?

As the title suggests, when I finish imaging a client PC, the SmartDeploy service is set to automatic - therefore it gets stuck "starting" and the client doesn't register with the Smartdeploy console. So, now I'm just in the habit of going into the services after I finish imaging a PC and setting the SmartDeploy service (not the SmartDeploy Enterprise Client) to manual. However, when the time comes to remotely image my machines, I can see this as being a huge pain. I'm on 2.0.3085, but this has been going on for awhile, at least several versions. Since the system installs the services AFTER the imaging, I would think it would get set correctly. Any ideas? Thanks --Ted

@brendanshreve - essentially the issue was something disrupting the installation of the pack. SmartDeploy doesn't seem to handle the failure of an installation very well. What I found was this - let's say I pushed out an installation of Acrobat. If some portion of Acrobat was running in memory, the package itself would be copied to the end-user machine, when it would attempt to run on the user's computer, it would see a component running on the end-user computer, then it would just stop (likely the MSI erroring out) would stop the deployment. No error message on SmartDeploy, just stopped. SmartDeploy client then appears to report back that the deployment is "successful" - however, it leaves the package from the previous install in c:\windows\temp - because the previous install doesn't appear to have cleaned it up. Then, if you try to redeploy - the package sees the package there and - for whatever reason - doesn't use it and doesn't try to overwrite it with a new copy of the package. So on this particular computer, the solution was to go into C:\WINDOW\TEMP and delete the deployment package. Then go into c:\windows\syswow64\smartdeploy\sources and delete the files in there. Reboot the computer (to make sure there is no component running) and in the computer's "pristine" state of just being rebooted - THEN deploy the package. As a habit now, if I have a package to deploy, I ask users to restart their computers and then I deploy it and call them when it's done to tell them they can log in. If I have a mass-deployment, I ask all users to reboot and leave their computers in that state or I do a mass-reboot of PCs from PSShutdown and then deploy. If Jeff or any of the guys at SmartDeploy have another idea of a better way to deal with this - let me know! Hope this helps, Brendan.

And do you believe this was fixed in 3065? I just looked at a small sample in my enterprise - but they do now seem to be running as expected with the service set to manual. And, yes, aware of the difference between the 2 services. Thanks!

ok - so, something fixed after I rebooted the deployment workstation - so now .3065 has install on the remote PCs. I'll check a few and see if it installs properly. But could you please clarify if it's still supposed to be "manual" or "automatic"? Thanks

Oh - and more fun -- I just installed .3065 to see if that might fix the problem and all of my clients are getting the orange exclamation triangle saying "install error"!

Is this by design? Since I installed .3060 - and SmartDeploy pushed the new agents, all of my clients have their SmartDeploy launching agent in "Automatic" mode - I thought it was supposed to be manual? It also seems to be perpetually "starting" If I log into an individual user and kill the agent task, go into services and set it to manual and then restart the machine, it seems to work correctly. Any ideas?

Just to add - even with application packs I've downloaded from SmartDeploy - they are hit or miss. I've pushed out FileZilla as an example. With no issue previously. Went to push it to someone today and it wouldn't push.

Thanks Jeff - I've done this with other MSI installs - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I understand the process. But honestly, application deployment for me has been very hit or miss. It would be an awesome feature - but it's not terribly reliable. Perhaps I'm missing something. I don't seem to be able to troubleshoot it very well. The logs - at least where i'm looking don't really offer any help. And the event logs on the PC doesn't have anything. I've rebooted both the SmartDeploy workstation and my PC. Other pushes seem to work fine - driver updates for example. Not sure where to start with tracking this down.

I've tried the .EXE and .MSI and can't get either to install - it doesn't even show up in the logs. So I'm not sure where I'm failing.