SMS: The Install Status May Be Missing for Advertised Programs That Do Not Generate Status .mif Files (292261)

SYMPTOMS

When you advertise programs to Microsoft Windows 95-based or Microsoft Windows 98-based client computers that must be restarted, you may receive a "no success" or a "failure status" message in the Status Message Viewer. When you examine the Smsapm32.log file on the client, you may observe that the following log is displayed after the client has been restarted:

SCHED DATA : A program status .mif has not been found.
SCHED DATA : Changing job status to success but not reporting any program status.
SCHED DATA : There will be no further program status .mif checking for this job upon restart.

CAUSE

This problem can occur on Windows 95-based and Windows 98-based clients when the After Running option is set to Program restarts Computer in the Properties section of the advertised program, and if the program requests that the client must be restarted. This problem only occurs when the program does not report a status .mif file.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, rewrite or modify, if possible, the advertised program to report a status .mif file after the program has completed its tasks. If the custom-made program cannot be modified to accomplish this task, you can use the repackaging feature of the Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) Installer tool to repackage your custom-made program where support for .mif status reports can be added.

For additional information about the repackaging process and status .mif reporting in the SMS Installer tool, refer to the SMS Installer Help file. If you choose to follow this workaround, you should be aware of the following problem documented in the related knowledgebase article:

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

292030 SMS: The Install Status May Be Missing for Advertised Programs That Generate Status .mif Files

Another workaround method is to rewrite or to modify the advertised program to suppress the restart process in the program's install process, and then to change the After Running option to SMS Restarts Computer in the Properties section of the advertised program .

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available.