[doug]

This is very peculiar. Approximately how many machines are you seeing this on? Approximately what percentage of your total number of machines does this include? Considering that this appears to be a new problem for you, I wonder if the issue was somehow introduced during your last Windows Update session. I think it’s plausible that one of the updates that you installed last maintenance window is the reason that this is occurring. Would you be able to list out the KBs that you installed in your most recent update session? If I can reproduce the issue by installing the update that caused it, then we should be able to fix it.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Can you confirm what version of BatchPatch you are currently running? We were seeing this occur last year in July 2014, but we fixed it in August 2014. If you are not running the latest version of BatchPatch (2015.5.7.x.x), please make sure to update and then try again. Let me know what happens.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

I’m guessing the issue is that you are copying hosts from an Excel sheet instead of just typing them in or copying them from a text file? In the last release of BatchPatch we made a slight change to how new hosts are parsed from the “Add hosts” dialog, and part of that change [accidentally] made BatchPatch worse at stripping off extraneous characters such as tab characters (t). When you copy hosts directly from Excel, for example, it adds hidden t chars to the end of the host names. This is why BatchPatch can’t ping those hosts. The good news is that we have fixed this in the next release, which will be published pretty soon (probably within a couple weeks). However, in the mean time the solution is to copy host names from a text file instead of something like Excel, or to manually type in the host names.

Let me know how it goes.

-Doug

[doug]

Mats – The current behavior during a deployment depends on whether or not the “Leave entire directory contents” is checked.

If “Leave entire directory is checked” BatchPatch does *not* create a sub temp folder under the target working directory. BatchPatch will place files into the directory that you specify as the target working directory, and then BatchPatch will leave them there when the deployment is complete.

If “Leave entire directory is unchecked” BatchPatch *does* create a sub temp folder under the target working directory. This is because the folder used is, in fact, temporary. BatchPatch then deletes the entire temp folder after the deployment is complete.

I’m a bit confused as to why McAfee would have a problem with a folder simply because it has the name “temp” even if it appears in a program files directory such as C:Program FilesBatchPatchtemp. This seems very odd to me. Can you tell me what happens? How does McAfee respond to this? Is there not a way to simply whitelist C:Program FilesBatchPatch (or whatever directory you’ve set as your target working directory)? Do you know of anywhere that McAfee might have the behavior documented so that I can take a look at what they say they are doing and/or why?

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Excellent point, Booster. In cases where a reboot may or may not be initiated you are absolutely correct. However, in the above case “Reboot (force, if required)” is used. This will reboot the machine every time, so this shouldn’t be a problem. “Reboot (force, if required)” always reboots the machine. The “force, if required” flag tells BP to attempt a normal reboot first, but if a user is logged on, then BP initiates a forced reboot, which logs off the user and reboots immediately, regardless of any open or unsaved programs that might be running.

-Doug

[doug]

Lewok – The issue appears to be that your job queue contains the following two items in succession:

Reboot (force, if required)

Wait for host to be detected online

However, the above lines in succession will be problematic. In this case what you really need is:

Reboot (force, if required)

Wait for host to offline and come back online

The issue is that when the reboot is initiated, if you have a “wait for host to be detected online” *immediately* after the reboot command, the host will be detected online before it ever reboots. This leaves you with the following in the log:

16:04:13> Job Queue: Initiating 'Deployment (install pro plus):: FileToDeploy:: E:Office 2007 Professional Plussetup.exe%**%CopyEntireFolder:: TRUE%**%LeaveEntireFolder:: FALSE%**%RetrieveConsoleOutput:: FALSE%**%Command:: "setup.exe" /adminfile C:comparedocstempupdatesinstall.msp%**%Parameters:: /adminfile C:comparedocstempupdatesinstall.msp'

16:04:13> jl2js42 is online and responding to WMI requests

16:04:13> Job Queue: Initiating 'Wait for host to be detected online'

16:04:13> Reboot/Shutdown: Reboot initiated successfully.

The deployment first begins just when the machine is actually about to go offline. So then just seconds later the machine is actually offline and in the midst of a reboot, but the deployment is still trying to execute. So, you need to make sure the machine goes offline and comes back online after a reboot. It is not sufficient to use “wait for host to be detected online” right after a reboot command since the host will be detected online before the reboot occurs.

I hope this helps.

-Doug

[doug]

When you save a job queue or a deployment, it is not saved to the .bps file. It is saved globally (in the registry). The only way, in theory, that you could somehow save the deployments and job queues and then have them seemingly disappear from your saved items, is if you were working with multiple instances of BatchPatch at the same time. If you saved the items in one instance of BatchPatch but then you closed that instance before you closed other open instances, you would lose the saved stuff. This is because the last instance of BatchPatch that is closed is the one that will be saved last, so whatever saved queues and deployments it contains will overwrite anything that was previously saved by another instance.

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for following up. I’m really glad to hear that you got it resolved.

-Doug

[doug]

Mats – Thank you for the feedback. I do understand what you’re describing, but unfortunately I don’t think this is something that we will be able to “fix.” That’s because it’s simply how the window is rendered in Windows. The issue, I believe, can be prevented by changing where your mouse cursor is hovering over the menu item, in cases where the menu item is very far down at the bottom of your screen. If you move your mouse to the far left of the menu item, this will usually prevent the blinking. Or if you move the BP window higher up to the top of your display so that the menu doesn’t extend all the way to the taskbar, this would/should also help prevent that.

-Doug

[doug]

Excellent! Glad you got it working. Thanks for the extra info about your environment. That’s helpful to know.

-Doug

[doug]

stevedev – This is very interesting, and it sounds like you’ve made some progress. Out of curiosity, would you mind describing a bit about your environment? I’ve never heard of the

The object exporter specified was not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070776)

error that you were receiving, and I’d be curious to know more about your infrastructure to understand why it was occurring. I’m glad that you got it resolved, but it’s peculiar that it was happening in the first place. The article you linked to above mentions a NAT setup. Are you somehow trying to connecting to WMI through a NAT device? Is it a one-to-one NAT? I can’t imagine how it could work in a many-to-one NAT/PAT setup.

As for the new Access is denied error, can you confirm that the Domain Admins group is the in the local administrators group on the target machine?

Please also take a look at the following link for some additional suggestions. See if any of the options listed here are able to work for you.

batchpatch-authentication-in-domain-and-workgroup-non-domain-environments

Ultimately I can tell you that I have never seen the Access is denied error be inaccurate. That is to say that if you’re getting Access is denied then it’s surely a permissions (or similar) issue, as opposed to there being some other underlying problem.

Another quick test to try is to just make sure that local WMI connections can be made on the box. So instead of trying to remotely connect, try to run BatchPatch directly on the machine in question. However, when you launch BatchPatch on that machine, make sure to run it with elevation using right-click run-as administrator. Then add the localhost (using the machine name) to the grid. Then see what happens. Do you still get the Access is denied error or is it successful?

Also, for the sake of testing, I would suggest using just the “Get last bootup time” action. This is a WMI-only action, whereas the Windows Updates actions use WMI plus PsExec, which requires additional access beyond WMI. It’s prob best to first make sure that the WMI-only actions, such as “Get last bootup time,” work properly first before trying the actions that use WMI in addition to PsExec.

Keep me posted.

-Doug

[doug]

BatchPatch automatically provides the proper quotation marks, so the “command to execute” need not be manually edited by you at all. When you create the deployment as specified in the screenshot, the “command to execute” is automatically populated as you see in the screenshot. I did *not* manually edit it, nor should you.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

ombra17 – What happens when you try to access \\targetComputer\admin$ and \\targetComputer\c$ from the BatchPatch computer? This is where BatchPatch is throwing the error. BatchPatch tries to access \\targetComputer\c$ so that it can create the remote working directory. If you try to access these locations manually by going to

start > run > \\targetComputer\C$
start > run > \\targetComputer\admin$

What happens?

[doug]

I believe it should just be the WMI and RPC services that you need to make sure are running.

[doug]

If you continue to have problems, please send us an email and we’ll troubleshoot that way instead of in the forum.

-Doug

[doug]

nhsitdept – It’s not clear to me exactly how you came to this… in particular what looks odd to me is the quotation marks in your command. It should be something more like:

Tue-13:26:10> Deployment: Executing \JesseTestWin7 -s -w “C:BatchPatchtemp” “C:BatchPatchtempsetup.exe” /configure localonly64.xml

---

Please try to match your deployment to the screenshot below (obviously you might have a different installer path and a different target working directory, but the rest should be the same). Your ‘localonly64.xml’ file should be placed in the same folder as the setup.exe, which should prevent the need from specifying the entire local path to it, though I don’t think that specifying the full path is where the problem occurred. And you should make sure to check the box that says “copy entire directory contents…”

When you then execute the deployment it should have the quotation marks set the way that they are in what I pasted above, not how they are in what you pasted in your posting. Let me know how it goes.

[doug]

Steve – With a firewall appliance, the configuration for WMI can potentially be a bit trickier than with Windows firewall, depending on the particular firewall device. WMI connections, by default, are not established on a static/fixed port. Instead WMI uses dynamic port configuration for its connections, which means that the actual ports used for a given connection are established on-the-fly at the time of connection. Each connection will end up using different ports. In the context of a classic hardware firewall, this used to be a problem because hardware firewalls would typically require any open ports to be configured manually. An enterprise firewall administrator could never know in advance which ports would need to be opened. However, fortunately many modern firewalls now implement DCE/RPC, which solves this problem and allows the use of dynamic ports for WMI/RPC. If you have a network level hardware firewall in place between the BatchPatch computer and the target computers, you’ll need to configure it to allow DCE/RPC, so that it can open the necessary ports, on-the-fly, for each WMI connection. More info on DCE/RPC can be found at the following two links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCE/RPC

http://wiki.wireshark.org/DCE/RPC

[doug]

Steve – This is an issue with WMI not being setup/configured properly, probably at the firewall/network level. The target machine needs to be able to receive and process WMI requests. I have never seen this particular error, but it’s occurring during the attempt to retrieve WMI info from the target machine. If you were to disable all firewalls and put the two computers on the same network, I don’t think you’d see this error. It’s occurring because either the target machine firewall is not allowing connectivity to WMI or a network device in between the BatchPatch machine and the target machine is preventing full connectivity for WMI requests.

I would suggest that you first make sure your firewalls are configured to allow WMI/RPC traffic. See this link for help: using-batchpatch-with-windows-firewall

Next I would google 0x80070776 and/or ‘The object exporter specified was not found’ to see if any of the suggestions made resolve your issue. Here’s a link that might help: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/99c278fe-df63-408b-b5b1-b95554b6b630/access-wmi-to-nated-machine?forum=netfxbcl

-Doug

[doug]

Hi jwiseguy – What you have listed is certainly fine. It seems like overkill to me, but there’s nothing wrong with it. I found that 99% of the time just a one time ‘download and install + reboot if required’ is sufficient. Occasionally a new update might appear after all other updates are installed, so a cycle that includes downloading/installing updates twice is probably sufficient. The third time is likely unnecessary. But overall what you’re doing is fine and it’s certainly not going to cause any problems. It should certainly ensure that you’ve downloaded and installed all available updates.

Note, when you say “all” updates, you might consider modifying your filters under ‘Tools > Settings > Windows Update.’ The only way to install EVERY possible update is to search for ‘Software’ and ‘Drivers’ and ALSO check all the boxes under ‘Update Classification Filtering.’ If you search for only ‘Important’ and/or ‘Recommended’ updates, some optional updates will not be installed. However, these may be updates that you don’t want installed. On my non-WSUS machines I use the ‘Important’ plus ‘Recommended’ checkboxes to download/install the updates that Microsoft deems important.

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for reporting back. I’m glad you got it fixed. I would suggest that at some point you try v2.11 again. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started working, as we saw this happen with one other customer who was having the same problem.

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for reporting back. I’m glad you got it fixed. I would suggest that at some point you try v2.11 again. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started working, as we saw this happen with one other customer who was having the same problem.

-Doug

[doug]

Interesting! Thanks for the follow-up. Glad you got it figured out.

-Doug

[doug]

Hello thenew3 – let me refer you to these two other threads. Please review them carefully, and let me know if you have any luck with the suggestions. Essentially, this issue has been reported by only a very small number of users, and it’s always only happening on just one or two of their servers. We have not so far been able to reproduce the problem.

error-2-hresult-2147024894-could-not-find-file

error-2-very-often-server-2012-r2-on-domain-controllers

[doug]

What is the *exact* error text? Please copy/paste the entire thing, verbatim.

Approximately how many of your 2012 R2 servers are working properly and how many are throwing this error?

If you compare the list of installed Windows Updates on a computer that is working properly with the list of installed updates on a computer that is throwing the error, are there any discrepancies between the two lists?

Please also review the below threads carefully, and let me know if you have any luck with the suggestions. Essentially, this issue (if the one you’re experiencing is *identical* to the ones noted below) has been reported by only a very small number of users, and it’s always only happening on just one or two of their servers. We have not so far been able to reproduce the problem.

error-2-hresult-2147024894-could-not-find-file

error-2-very-often-server-2012-r2-on-domain-controllers

-Doug

[doug]

The Error 0 server 2012 issue was fixed in August 2014 (started occurring after a particular patch that Microsoft released at the time), so please update to the latest version. Also note there were more than a dozen other releases between your version and the current version, so I would highly recommend that you stay up to date as new versions are released. The default config of the software automatically notifies when updates are released (Tools > Settings > Check for updates on startup).

I’m not sure about the other Error 2 issue that you’re experiencing, but let’s see if it’s also addressed by the update.

-Doug

[doug]

Booster – It sounds like you’re on the right track. I’m not sure how long you left it running before you decided to stop the service and decided that it was running endlessly. However, I think you’re correct that it’s not a BP issue. I’ve seen some cases, in particular when using the WsusScn2.cab file, where a search can take a very long time. If a computer doesn’t have free RAM and plenty of CPU horsepower, it can take a very long time for it to parse the WsusScn2.cab file. However, I think your plan of restarting the machine and renaming the softwaredistribution folder is a good bet.

Good luck.

-Doug

[doug]

What version of BatchPatch is this? (See Help > About)

What action produces the error 0 and error 2? What is the full *exact* text of the error?

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for reporting this, Booster. This shouldn’t happen, as there are already multiple ways that BP is checking for and replacing the file if there is a newer one available. It’s not quite clear what might have caused this in your case, but I think it’s likely a rare set of circumstances. We’ll review the code to see if there’s anything else we can do to prevent this from occurring in the future.

-Doug

[doug]

Mats – We are aware of this issue. It will be fixed in the next version. The issue is that when you copy/paste directly from Excel, each cell adds a hidden t (tab char). BatchPatch used to auto-remove the t until the most recent version when we made a slight change to the parsing, but forgot to deal with the t from Excel, not realizing that users were so frequently copying directly from Excel. The next version will remove the t once again.

-Doug

[doug]

Jason – Yes, we are aware of this issue. The next release will allow copy/paste from Excel to work properly again without the extra notepad step.

Thanks,

Doug

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