Let me start out by saying I have been a Symantec AntiVirus Fan and Reseller for a long time. No I did not say Norton, I said Symantec, their is a huge difference in the product lines.
So imagine my frustration when 2 out of the last 5 installations were plagued by this when I opened the console.
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I spent hours and hours of unbillable time trying to figure this out on my own, but to no avail.
So I finally broke down and called Symantec Support ( a free call when you buy maintenance) to get some help. Turns out others are having similar issues, but it is not always the same fix. I lucked into a great tech named George, who was amazingly diligent and persistent. He went through all the same first steps I did which are listed in the
Symantec Knowledge Base, we uninstalled and reinstalled the SEPM many times, but always getting this same error. We spent 3.5 hours that first day, but we really needed to reboot the box and folks were working so I told him I would do it that night and he would call me back the next day.
Well he wasn’t able to call me the next day (I called it in as a low to moderate priority, I don’t like to cry wolf) but when he did cal back we had the same issue. So having exhausted all the know issues he downloaded
ProcMon from Microsoft and dug into the errors. Turned out that a couple of registry keys needed additional rights. Also the admin password I choose had an @ in it, and it turns out the embedded database doesn’t like that or some of the other upper characters.
I thought I would share the registery info here in case it helps you out of this situation. I would recommend you follow the article first as most cases will get solved in that process, but if you are at a loss after that, try these changes AT YOUR OWN RISK of course, neither I nor Symantec will be responsible if you screw-up your registery. Did I mention back it up first?
Here is the first key you need to fix,
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\pmem2.MachineInfo2.1
Right click on it and select Permissions
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You need to make sure that System and DomainName\Administrators
Both have Full Control
The other key you need to fix is,
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ASAProv
Right click on it and select Permissions
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You need to make sure that System and DomainName\Administrators both have Full Control
And on this key you also need to make sure DomainName\Users have Read rights
(you may need to add Users by clicking the add button)
After making these changes I was able to see the top 3 sections without the error on opening the console
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This is what worked for me, like I said there are many different issues they are seeing, so if this doesn’t help you, get out your license agreement and call the support number, maybe you will get lucky and George will answer your call.
btw if like me you have some machines that are not domain members, but you still want to enforce your policies on them (whose a control freak) the is a KNOWLEDGE BASE ARTICLE that spells out how to do it.
