Book Image

Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager

By : Gerry Hampson
Book Image

Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager

By: Gerry Hampson

Overview of this book

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is the most popular enterprise client management solution in the world with some of the best features available. Troubleshooting this product, however, is not always as simple as you might want, not least getting to know the hundreds of log files and understanding how the various components work. The book starts with discussing the most commonly used tools for troubleshooting the variety of problems that can be seen in Configuration Manager. It then moves to providing a high level view of the available log files, their locations, what they relate to and what they typically contain. Next, we will look at how we can fully utilize and extend all the available information from the console monitoring pane through to the status messages and down into error logging with some further reaches into WMI, SQL, registry and the file structure. You will then learn what the common error codes mean, how to make sense of the less common ones and what they actually mean with respect to Configuration Manager. Further to this, you will pick up widely acknowledged best practices both from a proactive stance when carrying out your daily administrative tasks and also from a reactive position when the green lights start to turn red right down to a complete failure situation. By the end of the book, you will be competent enough to identify and diagnose the root causes of System Center Configuration Manager administration issues and resolving them.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
2
Configuration Manager Monitoring Workspace and Log Files
Index

Error code lists


When working with Microsoft technologies, we sometimes see the same error message used in different products. This makes a lot of sense because some products will use code from others and some will interact with others. Often overlooked is taking an error message from Configuration Manager and finding an unrelated example from another product. Let me give an example of HTTP. Many of the Configuration Manager roles are based on HTTP communication, and HTTP has a standard set of error messages. Add in some certificates and HTTPS communications and it is not unusual for people to start to get lost in the logs. What is often found is that if we take the error out of its Configuration Manager context for a moment and look at what that error means specifically in Internet Information Services (IIS), then this can help us understand what is happening, which can be applied back to our specific problem. This also works when searching on the Internet for error codes as it is something we all do as there is a breadth of information out there. We may well find that if we search for an error code on the Web, we can see the same error elsewhere; don't be put off and read it through as we might find it gives us that eureka moment.

With this in mind, we are not going to list every error code as this would be exhaustive; however, it is worthwhile bookmarking these standard lists that are recommended as being useful. Many of these error codes are also embedded into CMTrace and can be looked up through Tools | Errors Lookup.

  • Windows Installer Errors Reference: This will help us understand the return codes from any Windows application or package deployments which is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368371.aspx.

  • HTTP Status Codes: These are the standard status codes used by IIS and can prove particularly useful when troubleshooting the availability of IIS-based roles. More information is available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943891.

  • Custom Err or Codes for Configuration Manager 2007: Don't worry, this is not a typo; these are reference error codes for an old product version. This is because there is no formal published list for 2012 or current branch versions; however, you will find that the custom codes have changed very little, so this is still a great list to have. More information is available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632794.aspx.