Auto-Upgrade Fails for Symantec Endpoint Protection 14.2 Clients silently without Error

Products

• Endpoint Protection

Issue/Introduction

When performing an Auto-Upgrade of SEP clients running version 14.2, the upgrade fails silently. The client does not upgrade, and no errors are visible on the client machine. However, the SEPM console shows various deployment status messages, including:

• “The client is requesting the full version of the upgrade package due to the delta's failure.”

• “The client has successfully downloaded and verified the upgrade package.”

• “The client decided to reject the upgrade package.”

Environment

SEP 14.2

Cause

The failure is due to residual registry entries from SEP version 12.1.x, which were not removed during previous uninstall or upgrade attempts. The upgrade process detects these entries and interprets them as the presence of a pre-14.0 version, which blocks the installation.

In the SEP install log, the following error is observed:

The installer detects that you are running a Symantec Endpoint Protection client 12.1.6.x or earlier. You must first either uninstall the client or upgrade the client to version 14 or later.
LaunchConditions. Return value 3.

The condition that fails is:

CommunicateLaunchConditions: NOT PRESEP14FOUND=0

This condition is tied to the presence of this legacy SEP 12.1 product code:

{F405701D-2DB8-4BFB-95AF-D2E6EA172EFC}

This corresponds to the following registry entries:

• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{f405701d-2db8-4bfb-95af-d2e6ea172efc}

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\D107504F8BD2BFB459FA2D6EAE71E2CF (reverse GUID format)

Resolution

To resolve the upgrade issue follow one of two solutions:

Solution 1: Uninstall the SEP client via CleanWipe and install the SEP client once again.

Solution 2: Delete the impacted registry keys

1. On the affected machine, open the Registry Editor.

2. Delete the following registry keys if they exist:

   • HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{f405701d-2db8-4bfb-95af-d2e6ea172efc}

   • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\D107504F8BD2BFB459FA2D6EAE71E2CF

3. Reapply the Auto-Upgrade policy from SEPM to the affected client.

Additional Information

This issue typically occurs on machines that had SEP 12.1 previously installed, uninstalled, or upgraded incompletely.

Use automation (e.g., PowerShell or GPO) to detect and remove these registry keys across multiple machines, if necessary.