[doug]

Michael – next time when the problem manifests, can you check to see if the services console (start > run > services.msc) still contains the psexesvc service? Normally what should happen is psexec will automatically clean up after itself, and the psexesvc.exe process along with the psexesvc service will both disappear automatically. However, if the issue is that it’s failing to clean up after itself, then we should see psexesvc service still exist in the services.msc console. If that’s the case, instead of rebooting you can try running on the domain controller the following commands to manually clean up the service. See if that works and if you can successfully use BatchPatch after you do that.

sc.exe stop psexesvc

sc.exe delete psexesvc

(or I think you should be able to run this remotely with “sc \targetDC delete psexesvc”

You can see a bit more info at this forum: http://forum.sysinternals.com/delete-psexecservice-on-the-remote-computer_topic10926.html

However, I don’t know if it’s safe to call this a “bug” with PsExec. It seems to be more of a failure, that may occur in certain cases. I don’t know what those cases are. It clearly only happens in certain situations, such as in your case on just your DC sometimes. Personally, I have never experienced it in testing or in production, and I use PsExec a LOT, on thousands of computers. Overall, considering how widely PsExec is used, I think it’s probably a relatively rare situation. That said, considering that it only happens on one of your machines, and that in the world of IT it’s probably relatively rare seeing as though PsExec gets TONS of successful use all over the world, I would still think that there is likely *something* happening on that DC that is somehow not compatible. I don’t know what it could be or why it would continue to happen intermittently on that one computer in your environment. Unfortunately I don’t think we are going to see a fix or code change in PsExec that will address the issue.

Anyway, I would definitely be curious to know if using the SC.exe commands works for you. I realize it’s not a solution for the cause of the problem and is instead just a fix/workaround, but it would still be helpful to know if that works in your situation.

I’m sorry that I don’t have any better thoughts or ideas on the subject.

-Doug

[doug]

OK – It’s hard to say exactly what is happening here. What we SHOULD see is when the BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe starts executing, it creates a number of .log files. However, those files are not getting created, which indicates that it is not getting executed properly in the first place. The only other place where there could be a problem is with PsExec. When execution begins you should see in Task Manager list of processes the PSEXESVC.exe. Perhaps that is what is actually getting killed by your AV software or by something else on the machine?

You could try a test to run at the cmd prompt on the BatchPatch computer: “psexec \targetDomainController notepad.exe”

This should spawn a notepad.exe process (hidden) on the target computer. In Task Manager on the target computer we should see both PSEXESVC.exe and notepad.exe. They would both stay there indefinitely or until you manually kill notepad.exe. After you kill notepad.exe, the PSEXESVC.exe process should disappear on its own.

In any case, given the fact that all of your other computers work, and given the fact that this DC does sometimes work right after it is rebooted leads me to believe that the issue is still something specific to the DC. I don’t think this is an issue with BatchPatch per se. Perhaps you can try to evaluate what else on the DC is different from your other computers? Is there anything different at all? Is there anything that happens on the dc after some period of time? Since BatchPatch works properly after a fresh reboot, does something change on the DC after it is online for a certain period of time?

There is no debug mode for the remote agent, but it doesn’t seem like it’s crashing. As you pointed out, if it were crashing, we would expect to see something in the event log to indicate the crash. It seems like it’s somehow getting killed by the DC. To date, we have zero reports of the remote agent ever crashing for any customers. The code for that exe is very clean, and this really seems like something that the DC is doing. I just don’t know what or why. I’m sorry I don’t have any better suggestions at the moment.

Let me know how it goes.

-Doug

[doug]

Actually – here you go. Here’s a VBScript that you can use to retrieve the CPU info in one shot without needing to manually multiply anything:

http://batchpatch.com/downloads/CPUCoreCount.vbs

In BatchPatch use “Local Command” with the following syntax:

cscript C:scriptsFolderCPUCoreCount.vbs $computer

[doug]

Hey Jeremy – We actually have on the list to add some basic SQL query capabilities, but it hasn’t been added yet. In the meantime, this will work for you. Create a “Local Command” in BatchPatch as follows:

sqlcmd -S $computer -d master -Q "select @@version" -U username -P password

---

With regard to CPU socket/core count, this might work for you. Off the top of my head this would really need to be done in a loop in order to do the multiplication for you, so you could write a VBScript or Powershell script to do that for you, but since I don’t have time right now to pull together a proper script, you can use the following 2 commands to give you the info you need. But you’d have to manually multiply the NumberOfProcessors by the NumberOfCores to get the total physical core count in the machine. You can eliminate the NumberOfLogicalProcessors from the command below, but if you leave it in it will essentially tell you if HyperThreading is enabled or disabled for a machine. If HyperThreading is enabled, then you’ll see that the NumberOfLogicalProcessors will be double the NumberOfCores. If HyperThreading is NOT enabled, then the NumberOfLogicalProcessors will be equal to the NumberOfCores. It might make most sense to create 2 rows per server, so that you can get the results for both of these queries, and then you can export to HTML, copy and paste the grid to Excel, or save to a .bps file and then import the .bps file as .xml into Excel:

CPU Socket Count:

WMIC PATH Win32_ComputerSystem GET NumberOfProcessors

CPU Core and Logical Processor Count:

WMIC PATH Win32_Processor GET Name,NumberOfCores,NumberOfLogicalProcessors

---

With regard to he window not responding, I’m not sure exactly what to make of it. Depends on how it’s not responding. If there is a lot of data in each cell, that will slow down the grid’s click/scroll performance (we have a fix for this coming in the next build). If that’s what you’re seeing, then your best bet is to close the columns that contain the large amounts of data or clear their contents. This could be the “All Messages” column if you’ve run many commands, or if you have the Remote Agent Log column open, that one typically gets pretty big, so closing that would help.

If the lack of responsiveness is not related to clicking and scrolling around in the grid and is actually just waiting for queries to return results, then you probably should try running less at once. I’ve never tried to query 1671 machines at once, so I’m not sure what to expect. However, I would expect that a couple hundred at a time should perform fine. If you really get stuck you could also launch a number of instances of the BP.exe and put a couple hundred in each instance. Again, it really depends on the nature of the slow-down.

I hope this helps.

-Doug

[doug]

Do you have any kind of anti-virus or host intrusion prevention software running on this DC? It sounds like the BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe is getting deleted on the DC before BatchPatch is able to execute it, and anti-virus or host intrusion prevention software would be the likely culprits in this case.

The normal process that BatchPatch follows is:

1. Connect to remote computer

2. Put BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe on remote computer

3. Remotely execute BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe and retrieve its output

4. Delete BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe

5. Close connection to remote computer

Exit Code 2 likely means that BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe is being deleted by the remote computer as soon as BatchPatch puts it there, so then when BatchPatch tries to execute BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe, the file doesn’t exist and so it throws error 2.

If you watch the C:Program FilesBatchPatch directory on the target computer when you execute the BatchPatch “Check for available updates,” you should be able to confirm that this is what’s happening. When you execute “Check for available updates” I would expect that we would see the BatchPatchRemoteAgent.exe appear for just a moment and then disappear, and then BatchPatch throws the Error 2. Is this what is happening? Are you able to determine what program on the DC is deleting the file?

I hope this helps. Please let me know what you find.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Yeah – unfortunately there isn’t anything you can do other than wait for it to complete. In the event that something truly appears to be hung, I would look at the processes running on the target system and see if you still see service pack executable (can’t remember the name of the exe off the top of my head but might just appear as a generic msiexec.exe or trustedinstaller.exe etc) and/or psexecsvc. However, as you know, a service pack installation will take some time to complete, so give it some time.

-Doug

[doug]

The current build of BatchPatch requires you to use the “wait X minutes” option to delay the next item in the queue.

However, we are planning to release functionality in a future version of BatchPatch that will allow you to wait until the computer is actually online, instead of relying on the “wait X minutes” options.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Thanks. Please let me know if you have any more issues.

-Doug

[doug]

Hi Ramesh – I’m not exactly clear on what you are doing. It sounds like you are using the “Deploy software/patch” Action in BatchPatch to deploy a bat file that contains the text you wrote above? I’m not exactly sure how you are trying to execute it. Are you using “Remote Process” action in BatchPatch or “Deploy software” action? Instead of doing that, instead please try to deploy without using the bat file. Take a look at this link which shows numerous examples for deploying an exe directly with BatchPatch. It should be pretty straightforward even from just the screenshot on this page, but you can also use the tutorials on this page for more info.

BatchPatch Software Deployment

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other problems or questions.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Nico – The current version of BatchPatch does not support this, but we are planning to include this functionality in a future version.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Thanks, DJ. This makes a lot of sense. I’ll see what we can do to add something like this in a future build.

In the meantime, one possible solution for situation number 2 that you described would be to use BatchPatch to schedule a task for a given computer and choose the option to “run task immediately upon detecting computer online.” You could have the task send you an email to let you know that the machine is online.

-Doug

[doug]

DJ – This change was intentional. The hover tooltip is problematic when there is a lot of data in each cell, and it became much more of a nuisance than anything else, which is why we switched to only using the more controlled middle-click tooltip. However, we will consider the possibility of adding back the hover tooltip as an optional feature.

Thanks for your feedback,

Doug

[doug]

DJ – We will consider this for a future build.

You’re actually the only person to ever request such a feature, and I must admit that I’m having trouble seeing the value. If you have a hundred (or more) servers installing updates and rebooting, does it really help to hear 200 audio sounds over the course of the couple minutes that all these servers are changing states from online to offline and offline back to online? Perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail how you envision this to be helpful or valuable?

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Hi Nico – This is a bit strange because I’m not able to reproduce your problem. The way that I successfully execute powershell scripts using the Local Command 1 is like this:

powershell.exe c:scriptsmyPowershellScript.ps1 $computer

However, I also just tried the same syntax that you are using, and it works just fine for me too:

c:WindowsSystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0powershell.exe -command c:scriptsmyPowershellScript.ps1 $computer

---

I wonder if the issue you are running into has something to do with permissions or execution policy or signing? It doesn’t *seem* like an issue with BatchPatch since I can’t reproduce it, but it’s hard to say. When you say the script “stops” what does that mean? Does it throw an error? I assume that you see powershell.exe in task manager for some period of time, but then what happens after that? Do you have any luck when you run BatchPatch as administrator (right-click on BatchPatch.exe and choose to run it as administrator)? Is there something going on with execution policies where somehow it’s not getting executed due to a powershell setting? Maybe try setting the execution policy to “Bypass” to see if that’s where the problem is? (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849812.aspx)

[doug]

Hi Jeremy – Deploying a service pack is pretty much just as straightforward as deploying anything else. The 2 things that I would pay special attention to are the location of the service pack installer file, and the Concurrent File-Copy Operations Maximum setting in Tools > Settings > General.

1. Regarding the location of the setup/installer file: Place this file on the same computer that BatchPatch is running on. BatchPatch is going to end up copying this file to any host that you are deploying the SP to, so to minimize network bandwidth, keep the file on the BatchPatch machine. If you keep the file on a different machine, BatchPatch will pull it from that computer and push it to target hosts, which will double the data transfer volume.

2. Regarding the Concurrent File-Copy Operations Maximum setting: The purpose of this setting is to throttle the number of simultaneous file-copy operations that BatchPatch performs. If this is not set, then BatchPatch will try to copy the same 500+ MB service pack exe to all remote computers at the same time. This isn’t the greatest idea since it will quickly max out your network connection and each file copy will take a very long time. Keep this setting to a reasonably low number, possibly even just 1. If it’s set to 1 then the file will be copied to each machine sequentially. The number of machines that can execute the deployment simultaneously will not be affected. The only portion of the job that will be affected is the actual file-copy operation.

Running the Windows 7 SP1 installer file with the /? switch reveals the available switches for installation. As with anything that is deployed through BatchPatch (or any script) the installation needs to run silently with no user interaction.

So, in this case we would use /quiet /nodialog (and optional /norestart).

To perform the deployment, highlight the host(s) and go to

Actions > Deployment > Create/modify deployment

Select the location of your SP1 installer file, and then enter the /quiet /nodialog switches in the Parameters field before clicking OK:

Then when you’re ready to execute your deployment, in the main BatchPatch grid, highlight the host(s) and select Actions > Deployment > Execute deployment

A successful service pack deployment will result in Exit Code: 3010, which means that installation was successful but reboot is required. If you didn’t specify the /norestart switch, then Windows will automatically reboot. If you did specify the /norestart switch, then Windows will do nothing until you reboot it yourself.

I hope this helps.

-Doug

[doug]

I don’t understand what you mean by “pull names from profiles.” Maybe you could share the script with me (you can email it if you prefer), and then I can see if it’s something that can be added to BatchPatch. However, at the moment I’m not sure how it would be done without querying Active Directory. By the way, you do not generally need special permissions to query active directory. For example, if you go to File > Add hosts from directory in BatchPatch, you’ll see that it queries Active Directory for users and computers even with your existing permissions.

Thanks,

-Doug

[doug]

Glad to hear you like the tool! Thanks 🙂

To remove the remote working directory go to

Tools > Delete remote working directory

BatchPatch is able to retrieve the list of currently logged-on users by going to

Actions > Get Information > Get logged-on users

To convert the username to the user’s display name, you’ll need to look at Active Directory Users & Computers, not BatchPatch.

-Doug

[doug]

Thank you for the feedback. We will consider this for a future build of BatchPatch.

-Doug

[doug]

I’m happy to hear that you like the tool!

Some common errors are addressed here: Troubleshooting Common Errors in BatchPatch

Other errors can be searched for in the forum. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then if you would describe in as much detail as possible what kind of problems you’re running into, I will try to help. To start with, what action are you clicking on to get the Error 64? What about the Error 2? I would want to see the content of the All Messages column, at least. Also please feel free to contact us via email (BatchPatch Contact Page) so that we can iterate more rapidly and exchange information more easily to get to the bottom of the problem(s).

Note, most of the error codes that appear in BatchPatch with no associated error message are actually just Windows error codes being passed through. There is a list of Windows error codes here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681382%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[doug]

There is now direct support for retrieving registry keys under Actions > Get Information > Get registry key/value

[doug]

This has been added.

-Doug

[doug]

No problem. Thanks for clarifying. Now that I think about it, we can probably do something like “Launch target working directory” which would probably be the most fitting since it will take you right to the BatchPatch dir on the target. And then from there the user can browse to whatever specific location he/she wants/needs.

-Doug

[doug]

Jeremy – Can you please clarify your request? Are you saying that you would like to be able to actually map the network drive by clicking “Actions > Map network drive to c$” or something similar? Or are you saying you would like to just launch “\targetHostc$” by clicking something like “Actions > Launch \hostc$” ? Not sure that mapping a network drive really fits into BatchPatch. Launching the remote host c$ might be a bit more fitting. We’d need to think on this.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Will do.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Excellent!

Take care,

Doug

[doug]

jagablack – it’s reported with the “Get OS Version” information. We’ll go ahead and clarify the menu item name in the next release so it’s something more like “Get OS version and service pack level.” FYI, it also shows the system type x86 vs x64.

-Doug

[doug]

Great news. I’m glad you got it working.

-Doug

[doug]

jagablack – I’m really happy to hear that the tool is working so well for you!

-When launching the separate login credentials dialog, have the focus default to the user name field as this is normally the first field to fill in.

Good news– this is already fixed in the current dev build, and it will be published within the next few weeks.

-When using File, Add hosts from directory, have a checkbox or fill in field to allow to append the DNS suffix of the domain or enter your own DNS suffix. This would ease name resolution in situations where you can’t modify the Batchpatch server’s DNS name resolution list.

We should be able to get this added to a future build too.

Thanks for your feedback!

-Doug

[doug]

Great! Glad you got it working.

-Doug

[doug]

T –

Using “Remote Command 1” to import a .reg file will *not* work if the .reg file is located on a network drive. However, if the .reg file were placed on the target computer and then executed with a local path, it *would* work. The reason for this is because when BatchPatch is remotely executing a process/command on the target system, the remote process does not have access to any network drives and can only access the local system. The exit code 0, in this instance, is misleading. The regedit.exe process is successfully terminating, which is why it returns 0, but it’s not actually importing the .reg file.

Using the “Deployment” action is the correct way to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish because it first copies the .reg file to the target computer before executing it with a local path as described above. I am not able to reproduce your issue of it hanging at “Queued…” nor am I sure why it might be happening.

What version of BatchPatch are you running?

What happens if you move the EIOBoardOutlook64.reg file to the machine that the BatchPatch console is running on instead of having it on a network drive?

Also, what registry hive is the .reg file targeting? HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE?

Thanks,

Doug

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