After retiring a computer, its asset data is later deleted

Products

• IT Management Suite
• Inventory Solution
• CMDB Solution

Issue/Introduction

A computer is retired and still retains its asset data, such as software and hardware Inventory, manufacturer, model, serial number, system number, etc. Later, this computer is checked again and found to have no data now or most of its prior data has been deleted.

Environment

ITMS 7.x, 8.x

Cause

Various.

Resolution

Retiring a computer by itself, meaning a Status change to Retired, does not delete data classes from the computer. All of its asset data stays intact, such as software and hardware Inventory, manufacturer, model, serial number, system number, etc. If, later, these are found to be deleted, then another process has caused this. These can include:

• The computer was processed by the the Inventory Clean Up task, which removes all software and hardware Inventory data. Disable this task from processing Retired computers if it is desired to retain all software and hardware data. Refer to the following article for more information:
  
  181156 "What does the NS.Inventory Clean Up scheduled task do to inventory tables?"
   
• The computer's name was reused by another computer and/or its hardware was reimaged. It is not recommended to reuse computer names or hardware as doing so can result in corrupted inventory data due to how Altiris is unable to reconcile these fundamental changes. Refer to the following article for more information:
  
  158254 "Computer's Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number or System Number are incorrect or missing"
  
   

 

Additional Information

180714 How does a computer's Status work?

157518 Computer Status unexpectedly changes to Retired

152868 'Retired' status is automatically being changed to 'Active' when basic inventory reports in.