Greetings, I have an environment that the OSD Task Sequences are not updating when I edit them. The edit of the task sequence seems to be saved OK but when the task sequence is run (from PXE) the edit is not seen. It is almost as if the PXE process is using a cached copy. However, I have restarted the WDS service, cleaned out the WDS cache and even set the WDS cache to refresh every 5 minutes so it isn't that. When I look at the Policy Provider log I can't see it processing the change. On my healthy test environment I make a change to a Task Sequence then check the Policy provider log and it reports: "SMS Policy Provider successfully updated the policy and the policy assignment that were created from package Windows XP Pro SP3 x86 Build and Capture (SMS00047), program * and advertisement Windows XP Pro SP3 x86 Build and Capture (SMS20002)" However, on the faulty server no messages appear in this log unless I create a new Advertisement. If I delete the Task Sequence advertisement and recreate it the policy seems to be processed. If I restart SCCM the policy seems to be processed. If I restart WDS nothing happens. The affected system is SCCM 2007 R3 running on 2008R2 with a remote SQL2005 clustered database. Can anyone suggest why the Policy Provider is not updating the OSD policies? Is there a particular service or log I can investigate to determine the root cause of this issue?Brett Moffett

WDS does not deliver any task sequence specific information so restarting it or troubleshooting it will have no effect. You can easily verify this by using boot media. What version of ConfigMgr are you using? Have you applied any hotfixes? There are a lot of post sp2 hotfixes: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys/pages/configuration-manager-post-sp2-hotfix-list.aspx. 982399 is a likely candidate for the problems you describe; so is 981640 (this fixes more than what s described in the KB including the fact that other threads don't properly restart after the backup).Jason | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys | Twitter @JasonSandys

... and even set the WDS cache to refresh every 5 minutes so it isn't that. So you are talking about: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019640?Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

Yes, I reduced the WDS cache timeout as described in KB2019640 and this did not fix the issue. I have just completed installing the 982399 hotfix but after changing a task sequence I am not seeing anything being reported in the SMS_Policy_Provider logs to say that the policy has been updated. The last policy update that I see is one from 4 hours ago and I didn't actually make a change to that Task Sequence to trigger this policy update. But as soon as I delete an advertisement or create a new advertisement the SMS_Policy_Provider shows the policy being updated. It is almost like clicking OK or Apply on a task sequence edit does not flag the change and therefore does not trigger a policy refresh. The only thing that seems to be triggering a policy refresh is adding or removing an advertisement.Brett Moffett

Have verified complete site health and that all the site components/thread are running and not throwing errors? Have you rebooted the site server? If that fixes the the issue temporarily, then it might be one of the other hotfixes. Have you reviewed them all? There are a couple of memory leak ones also. Probably time to call CSS and they should be able to track down the issue quicker.Jason | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys | Twitter @JasonSandys

Yes I have verified the health of the server. The only issues that are being reported is that it can't connect to the passive node of the clustered SQL server (Expected) and that some of the branch DP's are not up to date due to slow bandwidth or the site being off the air (Expected) On your advice I looked at the other hotfixes that have memory leak issues and I installed: KB977056, KB982400 and KB2176220 After installing all these installs the issue seems to have gone away. If I now update a task sequence the policy provider reports the change has occured in the Policy_Provider log within 10 seconds. (Much better than the 6-12 hours it was taking) Thank you again for your assistance.Brett Moffett