Sherry Kissinger at myITforum.com

Dell Warranty Script Updated

5/11/2011 Update: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/skeiffer/archive/2011/05/11/dell-warranty-info.aspx

Todd Miller noticed that the Dell Warranty Script (http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/skissinger/archive/2008/12/03/dell-warranty-info-hardware-inventory-extension.aspx) was no longer reliably returning the results expected.  After some testing, we think we have the script updated correctly.  The updated script is in the link above.

As always, the Dell Warranty script, used to locally populate a WMI namespace for later hinv/custom mof retrieval, is dependent upon two main criteria:  1) that your computers have the rights to query a web page on the internet (not all companies' proxies or firewalls permit this), and 2) that Dell does not change the format of the returned information when using a specifically formatted web page request. 

Since I think this is the 3rd or 4th time the Configmgr community has updated the script, I think we can safely presume that every few months, Dell does change the format of the returned information.  So please keep in mind that this script + mof edit are intended as a useful guide, but are not meant to be the correct official source for warranty information in your company.  The correct channel for determining Warranty information is the channel(s) you have always used: communicating with your Dell service representative for your organization and working with them to get official counts and information.

ClientIDManagerStartup.log Failed to find the certificate in store

This fix has been in forum posts, and probably blog posts elsewhere as well.  But it's one of those things I know I'm going to see the error again in the future, and I'll remember I used to know what the fix was... but don't recall it anymore.  So before my brain forgets exactly what the fix was, I'm blogging it so I can find the answer in the future. 

Symptoms:

• Configmgr Client assigns to a sitecode fine.
• clientlocation.log shows it correctly found the managementpoint, and you know the management point is working fine for 99.9% of the rest of the clients; it's just this one that is failing.
• ClientIDManagerStartup.log repeats "Failed to find the certificate in the store".
• Uninstall/resinstall with RESETKEYINFORMATION=TRUE does not fix the issue.

Potential fix:

Grant full ntfs security rights to SYSTEM to this folder, or if you are really paranoid, just the file that starts with "19c..." within this folder:

c:\documents and settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys

Then either just wait 10 minutes or so for the next certificate request within ClientIDManagerStartup.log, or restart SMS Agent Host to kick it into asking for a cert immediately.