Symantec Management Agent service is crashing after agent is installed

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

After the Symantec Management Agent (SMA or Altiris Agent) is installed on a Windows Server, the Symantec Management Agent service (AeXNSAgent.exe) starts and few seconds later, it stops.
The Agent logs shows errors like this one:

Fatal error occured in module 'AeXNSAgent.exe (8.7.3391.0)' in 'AeXNSAgent.exe'.
Process ID: 29872
Thread ID: 21868
Context Record: 00000064FFFFDA30
Exception Record: 00000064FFFFD990
Exception Code: C0000417
Flags: 00000001
Address: 00007FF698A1F061

RAX=00000064FFFFDA30 RBX=0000000000000000 RCX=00000064FFFFDA30 RDX=0000000000000000 RSI=0000000000000000
RDI=0000000000000000 RBP=0000000000000000 RSP=00000064FFFFDF30 R8 =0000000000000000 R9 =0000000000000000
R10=00007EE1FBBAFA28 R11=00000064FFFFDA30 R12=00000064FFFFE270 R13=0000000000000000 R14=0000000000000000
R15=000000000000000A RIP=00007FF698A1F061 FLG=00000246
CS=0033 DS=002B SS=002B ES=002B FS=0053 GS=002B

Dump file: C:\ProgramData\Symantec\Symantec Agent\CrashDumps\AeXNSAgent_29872_21868_LaptopTest_2025-08-26_17-02-41.ez2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 8/26/2025 1:03:05 PM, Tick Count: 646857531 (7.11:40:57.5310000), Size: 1.01 KB
Process: AeXAgentUtil.exe (22764), Thread ID: 2284, Module: AeXAgentUtil.exe
Priority: 1, Source: CrashControl

Environment

ITMS 8.7.x, 8.8

Cause

Defect. The crash is caused by the incorrect IIS binding settings. A very unusual scenario.
In this particular issue, somehow the IIS settings end up looking different to this:

http::80:,net.tcp:808:,net.msmq:localhost,msmq.formatname:localhost,net.pipe:*,https::443:

We are expecting that the IIS settings includes protocol, host, port parts delimited by ":".

The issue here is that our SMA expects protocol:host:port format and crashes otherwise. This caused by incorrect IIS bindings string.

Resolution

This issue has been fixed in ITMS 8.8.1

 

Workaround for those still at ITMS 8.8 or earlier.

Recommendation:

1. Correct binding in IIS manager. Select the site and open Advanced Settings and make sure matches like this:
   
   
   
   
2. OR Reinstall IIS on the affected Windows Server.