DS 7.5 HF4: Agent not starting after image deployment

[sfaucher]

In my VM test environment I have a fresh install of 7.5 (not upgraded) on 2008 R2 and successfully completed a scripted OS install of Windows 7 on a VM client, prepped and captured an image, and pushed the image back to the client VM. The image successfully deploys and reboots into production, but the agent never starts up. If I manually start the service, it runs just fine, but obviously I need it to start on its own after deployment so the rest of my jobs can finish. Any ideas what might be causing this? So far I have tried completely re-creating my scripted OS install and re-taking the image, as well as re-building the automation environment with no change.

[sfaucher]

Also, the agent starts if I manually reboot the client after deployment as well. I should also mention I am using a custom unattend file that worked fine in 7.1. All it's doing in this case is adding a user, enabling local administrator and setting local admin to auto-login.

The event log on the initial bootup shows two entries for AeXAgentSrvHost. One indicating 'Service started', and one 'Service stopped' 16 seconds later.

The Agent log seems to indicate it was in the process of starting and received a request to stop:

<event date='02/24/2014 09:42:01.8540000 -06:00' severity='4' hostName='TST-VM-0001' source='SessionHost' module='AeXAgentUIHost.exe' process='AeXAgentUIHost.exe' pid='2656' thread='2660' tickCount='60918' >

  <![CDATA[Received external exit request, this session will exit]]>

[sfaucher]

We've narrowed this down to the fact that our custom unattend file sets up autologon. It appears if you have autologon on in an image (or set up as we do via unattend) and deploy it, the agent won't start up correctly the first time. Support is looking into it.

[sfaucher]

This appears to be fixed in HF5. We worked our way up to tier 3 support and never really got anywhere. It only happened on really fast clients (VM running on a host with an SSD), so it seemed to be a race condition of some sort. As of applying HF5 today in my test environment (and rebuilding automation) the agent starts up correctly every time. I tested several images that had the issue multiple times each without a problem.

[Migration User]

It would have been interesting to look at the logs from the failing systems, because it sounded to me like the setup itself - MiniSetup - wasn't completing correctly.  For instance, at the end of MiniSetup, MS is supposed to start all services set to automatic.  Since the SMA service should be in that state, it should start.  If not, it should get an error code in the Windows logs or something.

Just curious - did you test if rebooting the system started the service?  That might further confirm it was running into an error state.

The only thing I can think of that AutoLogon might do to stop that would be ...  I wonder if it had to do with that stupid delayed start the agent has...  Huh.  Also, you might read the release notes for HF5 to see if the agent itself, not DS, had any updates that might have affected this.

 

Think about those things anyway next time because i'm ... concerned you might see it again.  I don't like "fixes" that just appear.  They make me mistrust them.  LOL

[Brandon]

I am having this issue in HF5 and I am able to reproduce it on a VM. Here are my steps:

SOI to install Win7 Pro SP1 x86 (without DA)

Capture Back-up Image

Preapre Image for Capture and boot to PXE

Capture Disk Image for re-deployment

Redploy Syprep'd OOBE generalized Image (with DA) to PC's.

Once I re-deploy it everything configures and boots into Windows but my Boot to Production job always fails unless I start the service manually before the job times out.

The interesting part to me is why does the agent re-download and install itself? That behavior is similar to doing a SOI. I dont understand why it doesn't just check in for a new GUID once the OS boots. I thought the prepare image task just did a /resetguid.

 

As far as the logs go: 13:39 is when I prepared and captured the image, 15:07 is when I redployed it and after the sysprep cleanup phase ran and rebooted once. After the reboot the agent does start itself then quickly stops again. After it stops I see AeXNSC.exe re-download to the root of C:, install, then clean up C:. At this point the SMA service is installed and set to Automatic (delayed), but doesn't ever start.

 

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