Tag Archives: MEMCM

SCCM

Configuration Manager can’t connect to the administration service

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The configuration manager console can’t connect to the site database through the administration service on server

I am looking to test out one or two features which rely on MECM’s Administration Service so was somewhat disappointed when I got the error above whenever I clicked on the respective nodes. Mine is a fully PKI environment and my initial suspicion was that it was certificate-related. Having spent several hours tinkering with the certificates and messing with IIS and getting nowhere I decided to sleep on it…

The first thing I noticed was that the SMS_REST_PROVIDER.log hadn’t logged anything for over a month so something must be broken. I went to the SMS_REST_PROVIDER component on the server with the SMS Provider role and noticed I was unable to query/start the component. Looking at the status messages, it was constantly trying to reinstall and failing. A little more detective work and I found a possible lead to DCOM security, so I opened DCOMCNFG, expanded Component Services, expanded Computers, and then expanded My Computer. First red flag I saw was that there was clearly an error ‘bang’ on the My Computer icon. Anyway, I persevered and right-clicked it and selected MSDTC whereby I got an error:

“The remote server has been paused or is in the process of being started.”

This lead me to another post which was talking about a cluster configuration which was receiving the same error message. This got me thinking…I don’t have a cluster, what’s this on about? Anyway, I went back and checked the MECM box and it transpired I did have an old cluster I’d set up ages ago which I’d forgotten about and had since deleted one of the nodes! This was no longer required, so I simply ran a couple of Powershell commands:

Remove-Cluster -force

Remove-windowsFeature failover-clustering -restart

After restarting. I checked DCOMCNFG and the My Computer icon no longer had the bang in place. Nice. Looked at the console but still no joy. It was still telling me the Admin Service was unavailable 🙁

I nonetheless sensed I was close. I went back to the DCOMCNFG applet and went down to the Distributed Transaction Coordinator node, under which there is another node called Local DTC. I right-clicked this and went to the security tab. I was interested to see whether the DTC logon account was correct. Unfortunately, it was (it should be NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService by the way). Another dead end. This time however I tried selecting the Network DTC Access check box. and opened up the MECM console again. I clicked on the Console extensions node and this time there was a short pause and everything appeared!

One weird thing I noticed. I was able to uncheck the Network DTC Access check box and my admin service seems to remain in place without error. I will monitor this but seems that it just needed temporary access here from my observations at present.

UPDATE:

Following the above, I found that a remote console I was using kept crashing. I had to add the Network DTC Access check box before it would load correctly. Further, it appears this checkbox should be kept checked as the console will begin to crash again when opened without it over time.

SCCM

Script Status Message queries!

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If, like me, you spend more than your fair share of time searching through status messages to figure out what broke in the deployment over the weekend, then you’ll know what an arduous process it can be putting the criteria into each query. If you have a good few machines to check then you literally spend half your time typing in machine names and times.

Well no more, because did you know it is perfectly possibly to script this? Status Message Viewer (statview.exe) is simply an executable and with the right parameters and the correct time format applied, you can simply call the status messages from as many machines as you see fit (although I’d recommend you limit this to no more than 15-20 at a time).

One observation when running this against multiple machines is that you’ll notice some of the status messages won’t always contain as much info as you expect – simply refresh the status message and all info will display as expected.

Finally, create a text file containing a list of the machines you wish to take status messages from and use the path as a parameter along with the date from which you wish to obtain the messages, in the format YYYY-MM-DD.

Please note this script assumes you have installed the ConfigMgr admin console on the machine on which you run the script, and in the default location. If you have installed it elsewhere please change statview.exe path accordingly.

Param(
 [string]$path,
 [string]$date
 )
If($date -eq "" -or $path -eq "") 
 { 
     Write-Host "File path and date must be supplied as a parameters.
     Example: 
     -path C:\Temp\Computers.txt
     -date 2021-04-09"
     exit
 } 
$command = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\bin\i386\statview.exe"
$siteServer = "SCCMSiteSvr.contoso.com"
$startDate = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMddHH:mmm.000" -Date $date
$Computers = Get-Content $path
foreach($compName in $Computers)
{
    $commandArgs = "/SMS:Server=\\$siteServer\ /SMS:SYSTEM=$compName /SMS:COMPONENT=Task Sequence Engine /SMS:COMPONENT=Task Sequence Action /SMS:SEVERITY=ERROR /SMS:SEVERITY=WARNING /SMS:SEVERITY=INFORMATION /SMSSTARTTIME=$startDate"
    & "$command" $commandArgs
}