Issues running VBscript UEM 9.1 Instant Clones Win7x86

[MathiasAndersso]

Hi,

we are experiencing some issues with running VBscripts, sometimes the scripts gets executed correctly but sometimes wscript.exe/cscript.exe just hangs without doing anything.

If we uninstall the UEM agent everything just works fine.

Wehave done some Procmon capturing and have seen a lot of entries regarding Immidio, but we can't find anything related to this in the FlexEngine.log

Do you know if it's possible to "blacklist" processes from being processed by UEM?

Regards, Mathias

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

I've never heard from customers having issues with UEM and wscript.exe or cscript.exe

There is a blacklist procedure, but I guess in this case something else is causing a conflict.

Do you have any security products installed on your system?

And could you post the output of the command 'fltmc' here? That shows a list of installed filter drivers. I've seen conflicts in the past.

(fltmc needs to be run from an elevated command prompt)

[MathiasAndersso]

Thank you for your reply!

Yes, System Center Endpoint Protection is the antivirus product being installed on our golden image.

Here is the output from fltmc;

Filter name                    Number of instances     Altitude         Ram

------------------------------  ---------------                    ------------     -----

immflex                                 3                               385910         0

MpFilter                                3                               328000         0

luafv                                     1                               135000         0              

FileInfo                                 3                                 45000         0

Thanks in advance, Mathias

[HartmutEhl]

Hi,

just a hint:

We had some difficulties of the same kind here.

It seems to be a very hard job to create a process in the system start.

And this happens if the flex engine has to run a task. This can  be cmd, powershell or vbscript.

So we use a timeout here, and, according to the logfiles, this timeout is hit very often.

But the script runs finally, just takes a long time to start.

Personally I think it is not a fault of the engine.

regards, Hartmut

[MathiasAndersso]

Thank you for your reply!

In our case we have for example an Active Setup running a VBscript for removing/pinning/unpinning applications from the Windows Start menu. If we're unlucky that script just hangs forever, which means that the user never will see the desktop of the VDI.

We can also reproduce the error by running a VBscript manually via double clicking it, or via cscript.exe or wscript.exe - sometimes the script just hangs in Task manager and sometimes it gets executed. If we uninstall the UEM agent on the provisioned VDI (without rebooting) we don't get these errors anymore, so to me it looks like UEM has something to do with this.

Since we can see a lot of Immidio related entries in our Procmon trace of wscript.exe and cscript.exe, I would like to know if it's possible to exclude wscript.exe and cscript.exe from UEM:s filter drivers just for troubleshooting purposes.

Regards, Mathias

[HartmutEhl]

Seems to be a different problem

- win7 x64

- we use powershell to pin/unpin

- all scripts of all kinds run fine if started interactively.

- just the system start is the critical.case

sorry, no idea.

[tschuegy]

Hi MathiasAnderson

Can you please post the vbscript? I think the problem is somewhere in the vbscript and not with UEM.

We do the modifications (Start menu / taskbar) like this:

In the master creation process, we run the following script (batch):

:: ***********************************************************
:: Taskbar
:: ***********************************************************
SET SourceDir=%~dp0
copy "%SourceDir%DefaultStartLayout.xml" "%SystemDrive%\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\LayoutModification.xml" /y

Here are the DefaultStartLayout.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LayoutModificationTemplate
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification"
    xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout"
    xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout"
    xmlns:taskbar="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/TaskbarLayout"
    Version="1">
  <LayoutOptions StartTileGroupsColumnCount="1" />
  <DefaultLayoutOverride>
    <StartLayoutCollection>
      <defaultlayout:StartLayout GroupCellWidth="6" xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout">
        <start:Group Name="Microsoft Office" xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout">
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="2" Row="2" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2016\Excel 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="2" Row="0" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2016\Word 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="0" Row="0" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2016\Outlook 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="0" Row="2" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2016\PowerPoint 2016.lnk" />
        </start:Group>
      </defaultlayout:StartLayout>
    </StartLayoutCollection>
  </DefaultLayoutOverride>
  <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection PinListPlacement="Replace">
    <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
      <taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Internet Explorer.lnk" />
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\System Tools\File Explorer.lnk" />
      </taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
    </defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
  </CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
</LayoutModificationTemplate>

With this method the user can still modify taskbar and start menu. It is not locked like when you do apply a layout file whith GPO.

Anyway, can you please post the vbscript you use in the active setup?

Regards,

Tschuegy

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

Are you also using Imprivata?

[MathiasAndersso]

Yes we are using Imprivata version 5.3.102.16.

We have narrowed down the issue to an DirectFlex profile. If we remove that profile script execution works.

We have also created a new DirectFlex profile for another application, which also breaks execution of wscript and cscript.

We have created a blacklist.xml file for DirectFlex, but that doesn't work either unfortunately.

I suppose this issues occur because both UEM and Imprivata has filter drivers and perhaps gets into a race condition in some way.

[MathiasAndersso · Accepted solution]

We finally managed to resolve the issue, I managed to get a space between the "|" sign, so after removing that in the Blacklist.XML file located in the General\FlexRepository\DirectFlex directory, script execution now runs as expected.

Content of Blacklist.XML;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<userEnvironmentSettings>

<setting type="blacklist" list="cscript.exe|wscript.exe" />

</userEnvironmentSettings>

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

Thanks for the update and good to hear the issue is resolved.

[Raymond_W]

Hi Matthias,

After working with PSO, it's great to see it is resolved... 😉

Raymond

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

I would still like to know what other hooking processes are in place on this system. Is it only Imprivata?

Because I suspect you will run into other issues in the future if we don't identify the conflicting hook.