Installation of Symantec Management Agent fails when using push install on Windows XP Embedded SP3 Thin client

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Installing the SMA locally on the XP Embedded machine is successfully and when trying to push install the agent the installation is reported as successful however the Altiris Agent folder is no where to be found on the system.

 In C:\Windows\AexNsc.txt 

*ERRR InstallService: Unable to create agent object to configure server, error: Class not registered (0x80040154) 

In ProcMon :

 

 

Cause

When the Agent is getting installed remotely it will store some data in temp folder, when the process called AexNsc which is responsible for installing the agent beginning to run, the temp location should have around ~100 MB free. In case the temp folder is configured to RamDisk which is less than ~100 MB the installation process gets a response that the disk is full and aborts the installation.

Resolution

1 . Disable the EWF : On Windows XP Embedded the command to disable the Enhanced Write Filter is : ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable (through CMD)
2 . Reboot the machine so that the changed in EWF will apply
3 . Login to the machine with administrator rights and click Start --> Right Click My Computer --> Advanced tab --> Environmental Variables
4 . Under System Variable, scroll down to TEMP and TMP variables which are both set to the RamDisk (Z: by default) change it to C:\Temp (both)
5 . Go to C: drive and create a folder called Temp
6 . Reboot the system once again
7 . Now you can try and install the agent remotely.
8 . Enable the EWF : Run CMD and : ewfmgr c: -enable
9 . Reboot machine to commit EWF changes

Another alternative way is to make the drive RamDisk bigger so that the temp files can be stored there, for that you would need to replace the steps 3 to 5 with the following :

3 . Go to Control Panel
4 . Run Ramdrive Manager
5 . Set the DriveSize(MB) to 120 by clicking the up arrow until it reaches 120 MB, click OK and continue to step 6  

Applies To

 Windows Embedded XP SP3 Thin Client

Symantec Management Platform 7.5 SP1 HF1