Month: July 2012

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SCCM 2012 | Native Windows Update Client Not Working

Hey there, are you deploying the Microsoft System Center 2012 Client to your desktops and then like magic the native Windows Client stops working?

Perhaps you even checked the c:\windows\windowsupdate.log file and found this nugget:

2012-07-12    13:57:53:803     392    1220    Misc    WARNING: Digital Signatures on file C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\SelfUpdate\wuident.cab are not trusted: Error 0x800b0001

Well then you had the same problem I did. The way I got it to work for me was by installing this hotfix from MS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2720211

In a nutshell you installed .NET 4.0 and WSUS 3.0 With SP2 (as you were required to) and BAMM! Fail.

Hope it helps, if it does leave a comment, love to know when people are helped.

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SCVMM 2012 | Force Remove vCenter Server

If you are reading this you likely took the plunge into Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2012, you added in your VMWARE vCenter, migrated some VM’s and then tried to jettison the old vCenter  that is no longer around.

If you did you likely got this error message:

VMM cannot complete the VMware operation on the <server> server because of the error: “Unable to connect to the remote server”

image

You may have went for extra credit and run this powershell command without luck as well:

Get-VirtualizationManager -ComputerName <server> | Remove-VirtualizationManager

See unlike Remote-VMHost that has the –force switch you don’t have a –force switch with Remove-VirtualizationManager.

What is an admin to do??

Well if you are extremely irresponsible and want to blindly follow a guy with a blog who happened to find a way that at least looks like it worked then good Sir or Madam you are in the right place!!!

SQL Studio with Admin Rights

First you will need to run SQL Studio Manager with rights to the DB. If you have this then move on to the next section.

If like me you didn’t end up having permission to the default instance then run this nifty sysInternals tool PSEXEC:

PSEXEC –i –s cmd (make sure to run with admin rights)

If that works and you now have a cmd prompt go ahead and type whoami just for fun. you will see you are NT Authority\Local System!

Now go ahead and run the SQL Studio Manager from this command prompt. Given each version of SQL has this in a different location the easiest way would be to look at the properties of the start menu shortcut to find the full path to the executable.

The Query

Ah now once in SQL Studio with rights to the DB simple run this query to force remove the vCenter from your VMM instance.

HEY!!! SERIOUSLY I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS IS SAFE!! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

DECLARE @computername varchar(255)
SET @computername = ‘<servername>’
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_AgentServerRelation] WHERE AgentServerID = (select top 1 AgentServerID from tbl_ADHC_AgentServer where Computername = @computername)
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_AgentServer] WHERE AgentServerID = (select top 1 AgentServerID from tbl_ADHC_AgentServer where Computername = @computername)
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_Host] WHERE [HostID] = (select top 1 HostID from tbl_ADHC_Host where ComputerName = @computername)

Now, if I you know a better way please leave a comment.

If this helped you, please leave a comment. Love knowing my time wasn’t wasted.

If you are Microsoft and you feel I am leading people off a cliff, PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment.

In any event, hope it helps and enjoy!

-Eric