Troubleshooting Inventory Plug-in Not Installing

Products

• Inventory Solution
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Computers are failing to run inventories because they do not have the Inventory Plug-in installed. You can see the Inventory Rule Agent but this is not the actual Inventory Plug-in.

What are some things that can be checked and verified?

Environment

ITMS 8.x
Inventory Solution 8.x

Resolution

Note: More troubleshooting options can be found under:

KB 181637 - Inventory Solution 8.x Troubleshooting Guide (Altiris)

This is a quick summary of initial areas to review/validate:

1. First check that the Inventory Plug Install Policy is properly configured. Go to Settings>Agent/Plug-ins>Discovery and Inventory>Windows/UNIX/Linux/Mac>Inventory Plug-in Install. Make sure that the policy is turned on and change the schedule option from Once ASAP to By schedule. Click Add schedule>Schedule time (or Window), specify a time, then click No repeat and change it to Day. Making the schedule repeat will make the Inventory Plug-in try to install again in case something didn't work on the first try.
2. Make sure the computers that need the Inventory Plug-in are targeted by the Inventory Plug-in Install Policy. In the Inventory Plug-in Install Policy select the default target (All Computers without Inventory Plug-in), click the pencil (Edit) button above, in the new window that opens click Update results and verify that the computers that need the Inventory Plug-in are listed. If not their agents may not be functioning or the database may not be receiving their basic inventories.
3. If the computers have been targeted by the Inventory Plug-in policy but have still not installed the Inventory Plug-in after several scheduled attempts then their agents may be corrupted. The corrupted agents can be uninstalled through the Actions>Agents/Plug-ins>Push Symantec Management Agent page or through the command prompt by running AeXAgentUtil.exe /uninstallplugins and then AeXAgentUtil.exe /clean. AeXAgentUtil.exe can be located in C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent or wherever the Agent installation directory is.
4. If the computers still do not install the Inventory Plug-in after their agents have been reinstalled and the Inventory Plug-in Install Policy has ran again then there may be leftover inventory files from a previous corrupted installation. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Agents\Inventory Agent and delete the Inventory Agent folder if it has files in it.