After Running a Repair/Reconfigure of the DS 8.x product, my PECTagent no longer functions

Products

• Deployment Solution

Issue/Introduction

After booting into WinPE post repair/reconfigure of DS, the pectagent fails to start. Checking in the PECTagent.log on the client in automation under X:\Program Files\Symantec\Deployment\Logs, you'll see a series of DLLs attempting to register, and failing on attempting to register the AeXBasicInventory.DLL.

Example:

[LocalTime] Log File Created.
[LocalTime] AgentGlobals.h:139 RegisterLibrary: x:\program files\Symantec\Deployment\Client Task Agent.dll has been registered sucessfully
[LocalTime] AgentGlobals.h:139 RegisterLibrary: x:\program files\Symantec\Deployment\AeXNetComms.dll has been registered sucessfully
[LocalTime] AgentGlobals.h:112 RegisterLibrary: LoadLibrary Failed to load x:\program files\Symantec\Deployment\AeXBasicInventory.dll
[LocalTime] AgentGlobals.h:114 Agent Exception, Could not laod file ErrorCode=0, SystemError=6
[LocalTime] PECTAgent.cpp:152 Stopping PECTAgent. Please check for Network configuration or server name resolving problem and try again.

 

Cause

A reconfigure may fail to extract the MSI.dll and Shutdown.exe files from the Server's OS, and thus will be missing from their following [default] x86 and x64 locations:

C:\Program Files\Altiris\Deployment\BDC\bootwiz\oem\DS\winpe\x86\Base\Windows\System32
C:\Program Files\Altiris\Deployment\BDC\bootwiz\oem\DS\winpe\x64\Base\Windows\System32
 

Resolution

Attached is a copy of these files, place them into the locations above with respect to their architecture type.
Once the files are in place, we need to refresh the package snapshot data, resync the packages and rebuild your WinPE preboot. Do this by doing the following:

Open C:\ProgramData\Symantec\SMP\Snapshot
Find the ​{374e1c49-4f58-4f5c-8d51-07a30f0d44ad} SIG and XML files, and delete them
Open Windows Task Scheduler, and within the Task Scheduler Library, run the NS.Package Refresh
Confirm when the Package Refresh finishes that there are new SIG and XML files with the same guid in the location in step 1
Sync the BDC package amongst your package servers
Regenerate your WinPE environment