SMS: Remote Control Console Problems When You Use High Compression (300150)

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Systems Management Server (SMS) Remote Control tool with a Microsoft Windows 2000-based or Microsoft Windows XP-based client computer, the Administrator console component of the Remote Control (Remote.exe) session may intermittently stop responding (hang). If Dr. Watson is configured as the default debugger, a crash log is generated because of an exception in Remote.exe. This problem occurs only on computer that use the Accelerated Screen Transfer feature in combination with the High (LZ) compression method.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Systems Management Server version 2.0. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

288239 SMS: How to Obtain the Latest Systems Management Server 2.0 Service Pack

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use any of the following methods:

Disable LZ compression in the Remote Tools Client Agent properties by clicking Low (RLE) as the default compression method for Remote Control.
Force existing clients to re-evaluate the compression method that is used by running the Hardware Munger tool. You can do this by reinstalling the Remote Control client component on all computers, by repairing the component on individual affected computers, or by using Rchwcfg.exe to manually run Hardware Munger on individual client computers.

The RLE compression algorithm requires less CPU overhead and in most cases improves performance over the LZ algorithm for the Remote Control tool.

For more information about compression settings, Hardware Munger, or other configuration options for the Remote Tools client agent, see Chapter 9 of the SMS Resource Guide.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Systems Management Server 2.0 Service Pack 4.