SCE 2007 Quick Fix: The admin console crashes when selecting a computer in the computers list

toolsignI ran into an interesting issue the other day and thought I would post it here in case anyone else happened to see it.   The issue is that if you use System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE) to manage computers in your environment, when you select a specific computer in the admin console it will try to display the information in the details pane but will ultimately crash with the error message below:

Description:
Stopped working

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: B0JHPZQR1B3GGBEMYEIFSKRWRQLFYWDD
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.1885.0
Problem Signature 03: 47be30a3
Problem Signature 04: mscorlib
Problem Signature 05: 2.0.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 4bf4c743
Problem Signature 07: f4f
Problem Signature 08: 7
Problem Signature 09: N3CTRYE2KN3C34SGL4ZQYRBFTE4M13NB
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.272.7
Locale ID: 1033

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Note that selecting other computers works just fine, but whenever you select that problem computer the console will keep crashing while trying to display its information.  Also when trying to run Reports for Deployment status, the reports will not work and will error out.

Cause

This can be caused by wrong information being reported by the video card driver. In this case, this happened because when SCE collected software and hardware inventory of that computer, the video card driver from that system reported an invalid value (e.g. a negative value) for the video card memory.  For example, on a working computer it will show a value as 256 MB, but on a problem computer it may show a negative value such as -340473856 for Adapter RAM.

This can be seen by running Hardware Inventory report (SCE console –> Reporting pane) for that computer and selecting to see video card information.

Resolution

The ideal fix is to update the display driver on that computer or change it to a new one. 

An alternate option is to update WSUS. This problem occurs when using WSUS 3.0 Service Pack 1 (3.1.6001.65) as it stores values in SUSDB as it's received (i.e. negative values), but in WSUS 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSUS 3.2.7600.226), it takes care of such negative values and does not store the invalid values in SUSDB.

Once you update WSUS from SP1 to SP2, it updates SUSDB immediately, and then your SCE console will not crash anymore while trying to display information for that computer.

Reports for deployment status will also start working fine once this is done.

More Information

You can download WSUS 3.0 SP2 from this link: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a206ae20-2695-436c-9578-3403a7d46e40

Milan Jajal | System Center Support Engineer

The App-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: https://blogs.technet.com/opalis
The Service Manager Team blog: http: https://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
The AVIcode Team blog: http: https://blogs.technet.com/b/avicode

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