Saturday 14 March 2015

Robocopy Multithreaded Not Working

Robocopy can be tricky to use even at the best of times. Use the /MT switch to multi-thread, it's the only way you can.

You can see if it is working properly by looking at the open file handles via the MMC Shares snap-in. Hold down F5 to refresh continuously and you'll see multiple files being opened simultaneously by robocopy.

"Failed to upload file SiteStat.xml" "error code" "access denied"

With EPO you may sometimes find a repository has failed to replicate. Upon looking in the server task log, it will say:

"Failed to upload file SiteStat.xml" "error code" "access denied"

even though nothing actually changed!

You have a few options now.

First, try doing a "Replicate Now". It might work.

If it doesn't, then try recreating the repository altogether. Delete the folder it is stored in and then recreate it and reshare it once again. Then do a full repository replication (as opposed to incremental).

If that still doesn't work, try giving the epo service account full control on the folder.

None of this should be necessary, really, but that's EPO for you. Sometimes it does strange things!

How to Remotely View and Kill Processes

I am used to killing local processes via the command line using the taskkill command. There's a few ways to use it but my favored is to use the name of the process because often there are multiple instances and if you run this command repeatedly within a few seconds, you will kill them all:

taskkill /f /im nameoftheprocess.exe

If you want to do that remotely then you need the /s switch

e.g.

taskkill /s remoteservername /f /im msiexec.exe

In the above example, I'm killing the Windows installer process on a remote server.

You can read more here:

How to kill process on remote computer? - Windows Command Line

KACE K1000 Force Inventory from the Command Line

With the Dell KACE K1000 appliance, you can force an inventory very easily from the web console.

But you may have a reason to just want to do it instead from the client itself. I do this when I'm creating Managed Installations. If I install or re-install a program it can be a pain to go back to the web console and dive through the menus to the device and then force an inventory.

Instead you can run this command:

C:\Program Files\Dell\KACE\runkbot.exe

There is a final parameter depending on what you want:

runkbot 1 0 - bootstrap,
runkbot 4 0 - check in/inventory
runkbot 6 0 - managed installations and file syncs

Read more here:

IT Ninja - force inventory to run from the computer

Vlookup Replace "N/A"

With a vlookup command in Excel, you often get "N/A"s if nothing is found. These can look quite ugly.

If you want to replace them with something, you can of course copy and paste the text so that the formulas are no more. Then do a find and replace. But that means the formulas are gone and the spreadsheet is no longer dynamic i.e. it won't change as the data changes.

Better instead to use a formula, I found a good solution here:

Quick replace #N/A by 0 when vlookup

Adobe Flash Test - Flash Player Help

How to know if Adobe Flash Player has properly installed?

I found this site useful:

Flash Player Help

EPO McAfee VirusScan Update Manually To Latest DAT

Sometimes with McAfee VirusScan you find a client that simply refuses to update. Via the EPO console you can run a client task, update task. But often, this won't work either.

Luckily there is a way to manually update from the client itself. I will say, however, this is usually just a temporary fix. But at least you can get the client up to date there and then and fix the bigger problem later (maybe a firewall issue or even requires a reinstall of the program or even a rebuild of the OS in rare instances).

There is a good article on how to do this on the McAfee site:

How to manually update the DAT files for VirusScan Enterprise 8.x

You basically stop the McAfee services on the client then go to the McAfee support portal and download the zip file for the latest DAT and extract it to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\Engine" then restart the services.

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