SMS Server SP3 Upgrade Problems and Fixes

I was quite surprised to experience so many problems because the upgrade to SP-2 went very well. The issues that I have experienced with SP-3 include:

• Logon point updates.

• Reboot required for client software distribution component on Win 98 clients.

• Remote control upgrade caused Win 98 clients to hang, displaying multiple out of memory errors.

Logon Point Update Problems and Reboot Required

Improper engineering of a hotfix caused two of the problems listed abouve. My problems have surrounded the post SP-2 Q281107 fix for inserting inventory from traveling clients. The hotfix is applied to SMS servers. Among other things, it overwrites multiple client files in SMS\bin and inboxes. The files are then propagated to CAPs, Logon points and eventually clients.

The problems were caused by the file dates on the hotfix files. The dates for the hotfix files are 4/3/01, while the dates for the SP-3 files are 6/10/00. Two problems occurred as a result:

1. The proper version of Clicore.exe was never copied to my logon points after the upgrade. Reason being, when the Logon Pont Manager compares file versions and dates, it sees a newer one on the logon punt. This issue will cause a "reboot required" situation for newly installed clients.

2. For *Win 98* clients - After the client upgrades, a reboot is required for the Software Distribution client component. This may be due to the dates on several DLLSs.

I've been working with an MS engineer on this. We've come up with a workaround:

1. After upgrading to SP3, I copy clicore.exe to the PDC\netlogon\x86.bin directory, and then start a logon point upgrade cycle. This takes care of the first problem. 

2. Still working on the second problem. The files that are expanded from the zipped hotfix to the I386 directory are the ones with incorrect dates. If you expand the files from clicore.exe using the /x switch, you get the files with the correct dates. I'm working on replacing the files on a client with the incorrect dates with the ones that can be extracted from clicore.exe. We are still testing this.

Of course, this problem would not have stopped my rollout, but new clients wouldn't be installed properly due to the wrong version of clicore on the logon point, and all my clients would have required a reboot. Not a good way to roll out an upgrade. I never would have caught this if I hadn't applied the same hotfixes to my lab as the ones installed in my production environment...

The support engineer reported my problem to the individual responsible for generating the hotfix. Supposedly, they have now repaired post-SP2 and post-SP3 versions of the hotfix.

Remote Control Component Upgrade Hangs on Win 98 Clients

 This issue is an old one but I haven't really had much trouble with it until now. I've gone from 2.0 then upgraded to SP-1, then upgraded to SP-2 and really haven't had many issues.

In this implementation it only consistently happens on our Dell Gx110 machines. There are also GX1 and Latitude models at this organization. For fresh installs and in-place upgrades, I have seen multiple out-of-memory errors that require about 3 reboots to get it cleared up.

Originally I thought it was NAI killing the install\upgrade. I went down that path, and completely removed the NAI install, but the problem still occurred.

I then realized that winoldap was running. According to Q266232, one of the indications of the Remote Control component upgrade was hanging. Check out my recent article on a sure solution for this problem. It's not fixed in SP3 so you may as well patch your Win 9x clients prior to upgrading. By doing this you wont get tripped up by this problem.