SMS: Program Group Control Stops Responding on Win16 Clients

ID: Q165786

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Systems Management Server version 1.2

SYMPTOMS

Program Group Control (PGC) stops responding on client computers running Windows or Windows for Workgroups, and displays the following message:

Program Group Control
Please wait for configuration to complete
Checking current Configuration

The client does not recover until the user stops Appctl16.exe by depressing CTRL+ALT+DEL and ending the task.

CAUSE

Program Group Control is incorrectly returning to query User-Group membership from the domain under which the computer was last verified by a Systems Management Server logon script, rather than querying the domain under which the user is currently logged on. The following are two examples of how this situation may occur:

Logging into a domain without any Systems Management Server logon servers from a Systems Management Server client that had previously been inventoried into a Systems Management Server domain through the use of logon scripts (for example, running Smsls.bat from the logon script).

Logging into a Systems Management Server domain without running a logon script from a Systems Management Server client that had previously been inventoried into a different Systems Management Server domain through the use of logon scripts (for example, running Smsls.bat from the logon script.

The net effect of not running a Systems Management Server logon script is that Setls16.exe does not run, and consequently does not update the ValidatingServer= entry in the [SMSLSIni] section of the Sms.ini file with the current logon server. As a result, Program Group Control continually uses the old ValidatingServer= entry to determine which domain controller to query for User-Group membership.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, remove the entry for the server listed in the ValidatingServer section of the Sms.ini file. When this entry is left blank, Appctl16.exe determines the actual current logon server and proceeds to only query this server for User-Group membership.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Systems Management Server version 1.2. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

Additional query words: prodsms sms

Keywords : kbnetwork kbfix1.20 smspgc
Version : winnt:1.2
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug