unspecified errors

[doug]

1. You need to look at the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column to see which update(s) failed to download/install. There you should also see an error number or HRESULT value, which will be the reason code for the failure. Note, the contents of the ‘Remote Agent Log’ column are replaced each time you execute a Windows Update action, so if you are running a cycle with multiple Windows Update actions, then in order to see the complete history of the entire cycle you need to look at the BatchPatch.log, which you can view in BatchPatch with ‘Actions > Windows updates > View BatchPatch.log.’ Alternatively you can view this log file directly on the target computer at C:Program FilesBatchPatchBatchPatch.log

2. I’m a little bit confused what is going on here. Your log is peculiar. In particular what does not make sense to me is that at Thu-21:29:44 the download/install/reboot task is executed. But then we see Thu-21:29:48> COMPUTER ONLINE. Where is this coming from? It’s not clear from your log where this additional “COMPUTER ONLINE” is coming from since we already see that at Thu-21:29:23> COMPUTER ONLINE. BP does not log ‘COMPUTER ONLINE’ twice under normal circumstances. Furthermore, we then don’t see anything else until ~12 hours later at Fri-09:48:57> Windows Update: Download operation completed. Additionally, we normally would not expect to see “Download operation completed” logged to ‘All Messages’ for a ‘Download and install updates + reboot if required’ action. We would only expect to see ‘Download operation completed’ logged to ‘All Messages’ when ‘Download available updates’ was executed. However, it’s surely related to the error 64 because I think BP could not continue and so it logged ‘Download operation completed’ since it could not continue with the installation and reboot. Though still I’m not positive exactly how this occurred. Lastly, the error 64 is coming from Windows, and it translates to:

ERROR_NETNAME_DELETED



64 (0x40)



The specified network name is no longer available.

All in all, it’s difficult for me to tell you exactly what happened here, but I will posit a couple of guesses. It’s as if the computer went offline in the midst of a BP operation.

One possibility is that after the computer initially came back ONLINE it automatically initiated a reboot on its own. Sometimes Windows Updates will auto-reboot the computer to complete an installation. BatchPatch has no way to track this, unfortunately. However, it might be why things got weird. One way to avoid this issue is to always have a 10 minute wait period after the ‘Wait for host to go offline and come back online’ to ensure that the computer has completed any additional reboot that Windows Update might automatically initiate. In this case while it might explain why we see an additional COMPUTER ONLINE in the log, it doesn’t explain why we don’t see an additional COMPUTER OFFLINE in the log before that.

A second possibility is that someone from a different BP installation tried to perform a task on the same computer while one was already running. It’s almost as if someone rebooted the machine while BP was working. Again though, I cannot say for sure from this log exactly what is happening.

All in all, I don’t fully understand what happened here. I would suggest first starting with the BatchPatch.log to see what updates failed. Then see what happens when you initiate a new download/install/reboot task. It might be best to not use the job queue or update-reboot cycle until you are a bit more comfortable with the results that you see from executing a few standalone Windows Update actions. This is your choice, of course, and it’s certainly not a huge deal to just continue using them. The job queue and update-reboot cycle are great tools and very powerful, but they add complexity and make it harder to decipher what is going on in the event of a problem. Certainly if you DO use the job queue or cycle, then at the very least I would suggest that you try putting a 10 minute wait after the ‘wait for host to go offline and come back online’ to see if that helps deal with any extra reboots that Windows Update auto-initiates.

-Doug

[mray]

Doug-

There would not have been another BP instance running, so either an end user doing something they shouldn’t have or windows rebooting to finish updates sounds plausible to me.

I’ll be sure to modify our cycle so there is that sleep time to hopefully alleviate the issue.

Unfortunately, I did not save that BP grid, so I cannot get any other additional details about which updates failed; I’ll have to check that next time.

Thanks much for the help.

[doug]

You do not have to save the grid in order to see additional details about which update failed. As mentioned above, you can view the log in BatchPatch with ‘Actions > Windows updates > View BatchPatch.log.’ Alternatively you can view this log file directly on the target computer at C:Program FilesBatchPatchBatchPatch.log. This will show you the entire BatchPatch history on that computer.

-Doug

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