Protection Engine Misc log error - Communication error with controller

Products

• Protection Engine for NAS

Issue/Introduction

An examination of converted logs from Symantec Protection Engine shows misc error: Communication error with controller

The error is frequent but had not been seen in previous examination of the logs. The appearance of the error also coincided with LiveUpdate and other auxiliary functions of SPE not working well.

Environment

Protection Engine 9.x on Windows Server 2022

Cause

The "Symantec Protection Engine Controller" service had recently been changed to use a named account "domain\user" as the "Log On As" account instead of Local System.  This service should start as Local System.

Resolution

Changing the "Log On As" back to Local System corrected the problem.