Error HRESULT: -2147467261. Object reference not set to an instance of an object

[jollyjokester]

Hello,

I get error like in the title, when I try to check for available updates. Did anyone get the same error and manage to solve this issue? Thanks in advance.

[jollyjokester]

UPDATE:

on some hosts PStools were not added to the PATH variable. When I added this directory to the PATH it started to work on some of the hosts, but on others I still get the same error (even thou PStools dir is in the PATH variable).

[doug]

jollyjokester –

1. Only the computer that is running BatchPatch needs PsExec. The target computers do not need PsExec. If you’re having intermittent results with sometimes working and sometimes not working, I question if the computer that is running BatchPatch is currently unstable. Possibly a memory corruption of some kind.

2. Your company purchased a license of BP almost 2 years ago. Did things all of a sudden stop working? I assume things have been working properly for the past 2 years?

I would suggest that you start by rebooting the computer that is running BatchPatch. I would also suggest trying to use Integrated Security instead of specifying alternate credentials per-row. You could also consider launching the entire BatchPatch.exe with run-as a different user. Then inside of BatchPatch you would not need to specify alternate credentials. It’s unclear to me what could be causing this error, and I wonder if there might even be some type of memory problem on the BatchPatch computer, which is why I suggested rebooting it as a first step. You should also consider trying to run BatchPatch from a different computer and see what happens.

-Doug

[jollyjokester]

Hi,

thank you for the quick answer and explanation. To be honest I don’t know whether this problem occured earlier, for sure it’s the first time I’ve seen it and only in one of the sites in our company. Earlier on someone else was responsible for the updates.

Computer on which I run BatchPatch was rebooted prior to the update process with Batchpatch.

I guess the problem is caused by the targeted computers. We got this error in one site only and only with few hosts in this site.

Once more, thank you for the quick reply.

[doug]

This is definitely peculiar. I think the error is occurring during the authentication process, which is why I suggested trying Integrated Security instead of specifying alternate credentials in the row. I’m not sure what your setup is with this other site, and it’s interesting that it would only occur with a couple of hosts.

-Doug

[doug]

We discovered that this error could occur in cases where alternate credentials is being used and the batchpatchremoteagent.exe is still running from the previous attempt. If the batchpatchremoteagent.exe is running, then when a new attempt to do a “check for available updates” tries to deploy the batchpatchremoteagent.exe, it can’t because the process is running/locked on the target system, and the file can therefore not be replaced. Try executing “Actions > Windows Updates > Kill download/installation” which will kill the batchpatchremoteagent.exe on target systems. Then try again. It seems that under certain circumstances the Windows Update agent hangs indefinitely (or takes nearly forever to return), and so then the batchpatchremoteagent.exe also never completes what it’s doing. There have been multiple updates to the Windows Update Agent recently that were intended to improve performance, so hopefully that helps. You might also consider restarting the Windows Update service on target computers that experienced this issue, though I don’t know if it’s definitely necessary.

[Anonymous]

The message “Object not set to instance of Object” means that you are trying to use an object which has not been initialized. That is, you either set it to null, or you never set it to anything at all. The runtime throwing a NullReferenceException always means the same thing: you are trying to use a reference. The reference is not initialized (or it was initialized, but is no longer initialized).

http://net-informations.com/q/faq/null.html

Antonio

[Author]

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