Is there an agent cleanup tool?

  • 25 November 2014
  • 10 replies
  • 971 views

We inadvertently deployed v9.0.5 to several hundred laptops and are having an extremely difficult time bringing them back to the correct version. Redeploying version 14.3.12 didn't work and has left the laptops with agent installs in several states of disrepair.

For instance, when attempting to uninstall the agent using the deployment tool some laptops state the agent needs to be uninstalled first yet attempts to do so error saying the agent isn't installed. Other laptops appear to uninstall/reinstall correctly but the service can't be started. Some laptops let you undeploy the agent but attempts to redeploy fail saying that the Sysaid directory exists.

Basically, it's a mess.

Is there a agent cleanup tool or something available that will uninstall the agent and remove all services and directories so we can start clean?

Thanks,

10 replies

Hi Someguy81,

Besides the tools we have available in the admin tools, we don't have any specific tools for uninstalling several agents. There was a chance in the agents from 9.0 to 14.3 in which agents were built on .NET. Depending on the workstations that have 14.3 installed, it could be that .NET 3.5 framework may need to be installed.

Michael
Second this request. Or at least a manual clean up method. I have a few computers (2008R2 Remote Desktop Session Hosts) out there that the old agent just will not uninstall. Is there a document listing all the files and registry items I can remove to clean out old corrupted agents?
CH
Second this request. Or at least a manual clean up method. I have a few computers (2008R2 Remote Desktop Session Hosts) out there that the old agent just will not uninstall. Is there a document listing all the files and registry items I can remove to clean out old corrupted agents?

Hi,

Which version of SysAid agent do you wish to remove? According to the information I have, the .NET agent doesn't have any registry entries besides the Uninstall entry itself. All the data is contained under \Program Files\SysAid.

Cheers,
Danny
There really is a need for a cleanup tool; just as there really is a need to be able to detect 32 & 64 bit OS versions as a field in the asset listing so we can know which .NET versions to deploy.

This is an issue I'm dealing with right now; we have a large number of remote [mobile] users who are not and can not be members of a domain, some of them with versions going back as far as 7.n - though most are on some flavour of 9: some are on 32bit OSs and some are on 64 bit.
It's not at all clear why the agent update process has failed to maintain the remote agents correctly: although the .NET issue may be responsible [we have an ongoing open support ticket addressing this and a few other issues so I won't go further with that aspect here].

Because for a wide variety of reasons RC no longer works with these systems and agent update also does not work anymore, the only way we will be able to resolve the situation is to send the affected users email with an MSI attachment with embedded configuration and a batch uninstaller script and then have them do an elevated uninstall/install while working as admin and then immediately afterwards [once we have full RC] change the admin details so they are no longer able to access admin functions. This is obviously a security risk but we cannot see any other way around this issue.

This is going to be a very messy process.
Hi Catering Support,

I have reviewed the post, and we have some good news. We are developing a "self-destruction" mechanism for the agent. The first stage of the mechanism will disable the agent if it cannot contact the SysAidServer in 10 days. The next stage (that is being discussed by the product team) might be the automatic uninstall of the agent (I am saying "might be" because the final decision has not been taken yet). If I am not mistaken, the agent 15.2 has this functionality already.

Regards,
Slava
Userlevel 1
Slava
Hi Catering Support,

We are developing a "self-destruction" mechanism for the agent. The first stage of the mechanism will disable the agent if it cannot contact the SysAidServer in 10 days. The next stage (that is being discussed by the product team) might be the automatic uninstall of the agent (I am saying "might be" because the final decision has not been taken yet). If I am not mistaken, the agent 15.2 has this functionality already.

Regards,
Slava


was this ever implemented? Because we have our clients running on the latest sysaid agent version as well as the old ones.
Hi NWG-IT,

This was indeed implemented.

Cheers,
Danny
Where can it be found?
Userlevel 4
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vette_lover
Where can it be found?


As far as I know, it's built into the agent.
Although I don't like it because there is no option to turn it off.
In the time of Covid-19, the workstations are often not used for a long time.

Then this option really does work
Thanks for the reply - I was able to remove it using a batch file script I found in another post

https://community.sysaid.com/Sysforums/posts/list/14764.page

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