Hi guys, We are having problems with running a regular Task Sequence (TS) on our server fleet. It is for scheduled maintenance and includes a number of restarts as part of the task list during our scheduled maintenance window. Problem is on a number of clients every month, the Task Sequence fails to wait for the SMS Agent Host to (apparently) start after a server restart, so gives up and never completes the tasks... smsts.log Successfully complete the action (Restart Computer) with the exit win32 code 0 TSManager 22/08/2010 7:49:16 AM 3060 (0x0BF4) ... Policy verification done TSManager 22/08/2010 7:52:35 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Config policies compiled successfully TSManager 22/08/2010 7:52:35 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Waiting for CcmExec service to be fully operational TSManager 22/08/2010 7:52:35 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Succeeded loading resource DLL 'C:\Windows\system32\CCM\1033\TSRES.DLL' TSManager 22/08/2010 7:52:37 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Failed to create an instance of COM progress UI object. Error code 0x8000401a TSManager 22/08/2010 7:52:37 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Timed out waiting for ccmexec service to be fully operational TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) 0, HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\framework\tscore\utils.cpp,4192) TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Failed to wait for Ccmexec service to be fully operational (0x80004005) TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) hr = TS::Utility::WaitForCcmExec(g_hShutdownEvent), HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\tasksequence\tsmanager\tsmanager.cpp,887) TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Task Sequence Manager could not pause SMS components. code 80004005 TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) hr = PauseSMSComponents(bReleaseLauncher), HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\tasksequence\tsmanager\tsmanager.cpp,1221) TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Task Sequence Manager could not initialize Task Sequence Environment. code 80004005 TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) hr = InitializeEnvironment(), HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\tasksequence\tsmanager\tsmanager.cpp,734) TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) Task sequence execution failed with error code 80004005 TSManager 22/08/2010 8:23:01 AM 3024 (0x0BD0) So our Task Sequence stops there and it never completes with our maintenance tasks ;( When we check the server, the Event Log records: Event Type: Information Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7036 Date: 22/08/2010 Time: 7:53:05 AM User: N/A Computer: <removed> Description: The SMS Task Sequence Agent service entered the running state. ... followed by: Event Type: Information Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7036 Date: 22/08/2010 Time: 7:53:05 AM User: N/A Computer: <removed> Description: The SMS Agent Host service entered the running state. So the SMS Agent Host service is definitely running! Anyone seen this before? Any ideas? This is frustrating :(

Fault, please advise exactly what version of Configuration Manager you are running. There were some optimizations in the area of agent startup that were included in SP2. Are you on SP1 or RTM?

Hey Eric, Thanks for the reply. I am running SP2 on the servers and clients. The affected clients we've identified are physical servers also. Any ideas on this one? It is real reliability problem for us ;( Cheers.

Hi, The first failure is for COM+ object creation, followed by time out for ccmexec. Looks like there are too many things happening and initialization is taking lot of time. Also the error 0x8000401a is when COM+ is not configured to run as Local service. Can we get the full logs please? - everything in CCM\Logs also look for _SMSTaskSequence folder to see if there's any additional logs there. You can mail them direct to me. Thanks, Bob Mac Neill

We have had the same problem occationally and it was resolved after a deep investigation by Microsoft. Here is the solution: As you can see in the log file above the TSRES.DLL is loaded right before the ccmexec waiting starts. TSRES is responsible in some way for the remote control parts on the SCCM client. It tries to find a SID for the local group name "ConfigMgr Remote Control Users". Here comes the odd thing: If this group not exits on the local computer, the operating system starts to look for this group name in the domain - forest - trusted forests. If you have a large or slow domain environment the ccmexec process times out before the domain answers to the group name request! The simple solution is to create an AD group named "ConfigMgr Remote Control Users". It doesn't need to have any members, it just needs to exist.Regards Per Eriksson

Per Eriksson, I have the same issue as you, logs look identical. I have tried to use the fix above by adding the group, but this has NOT fixed my issue. Was there anything else Microsoft looked at before you came to this solution? Regards, Dave