SCCM KB4018655 clients reinstall every five hours.
Summary
A Microsoft System Center 2012 or System Center 2012 R2 client installation (CCMSetup) initially fails and causes a client retry task to be registered in Windows Task Scheduler. After the client installation succeeds, the retry task is not deleted as expected. Therefore, the clients continue to reinstall every five hours.
In this situation, if you upgrade the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager infrastructure to System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch or Long-Term Servicing Branch, and if you do not upgrade the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager clients, the scheduled retry task continues to force a client reinstallation every five hours.
The next time that CCMSetup runs, the clients find an updated management point or distribution point, and they reinstall the client software. This upgrades the clients to System Center Configuration Manager.
These continual upgrades occur outside the normal upgrade process that is configured by the administrator. This includes the client piloting feature.
Symptoms
In a Microsoft System Center 2012 or System Center 2012 R2 environment, you notice the following symptoms:
- Clients successfully reinstall themselves every five hours. This activity is logged in the ccmsetup.log and Windows event logs.
- When you view the \Microsoft\Microsoft\ConfigurationManager folder in Task Scheduler, you find a task that is named “Configuration Manager Client Retry Task.”
Cause
This issue occurs because CCMSetup creates the client retry task in the wrong folder on the client. This prevents CCMSetup from locating and removing the task.
The scheduled task is created in the “\Microsoft\Microsoft\Configuration Manager” folder instead of the “\Microsoft\Configuration Manager” folder.
Workaround
To work around this problem, remove the retry task. To do this, use one of the following methods.
Method 1
Manually remove “Configuration Manager Client Retry Task” from the “\Microsoft\Microsoft\Configuration Manager” folder by using Task Scheduler.
Method 2
Deploy a script to remove “Configuration Manager Client Retry Task” from the “\Microsoft\Microsoft\Configuration Manager” folder.
Example Windows PowerShell commands to add to your script
get-scheduledtask -taskname "Configuration Manager Client Retry Task"
unregister-scheduledtask -taskname "Configuration Manager Client Retry Task" -confirm:$false
