Saturday, 23 May 2009

SBS 2008 – Symantec EndPoint Error – Unable to communicate with reporting component

All of our Symantec EndPoint Protection (SEP) installs have been flawless up until today.

image

Error

Unable to communicate with the reporting component.

Trying to find the solution in the midst of all of the fluff that comes up while searching for it has been tough!

The following Symantec knowledge base article helped us out:

First, we needed to correct the ODBC settings. Since we are on SBS 2008, we need to access the 32bit version of the ODBC manager.

  1. Start –> Run –> odbcad32.exe [Enter]
  2. UAC: Continue
  3. System DSN tab:
    • ODBC: Leave
    • Login:
      • User ID: DBA
      • Password: Same as your SEP Admin
    • Database:
      • Server Name: MY-SBS
    • Network:
      • TCP/IP: SBS IP Address
    • Advanced:
      • Leave alone.
  4. Click the ODBC tab and click the Test Connection button.

You should see:

image

From there, elevate a command prompt and:

  • iisreset [Enter]

The second part of the mentioned article indicated that we should change the service associated with the DefaultAppPool. We did not do this since so many services depend on that pool.

After resetting IIS, restart the two Symantec services and you should see:

image

At least we are not looking at a reinstall!

Note that the Symantec communication ports need to be added to the SBS 2008 Windows Firewall with Advanced Security:

  • Admin site: 8014
  • Admin communication: 8443

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How can you use such atrocious software?

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

We have had our issues with another vendor as indicated on the blog elsewhere.

In the "Security" world, sometimes we run with the lesser of all evils! ;)

Philip

Anonymous said...

I see your point - we used SAV up to 10.2 but Endpoint was dire. I mean, truly dire.

It says something that the IT director of Asus was posting on the Symantec Endpoint forums at the time!

At the moment, Kaspersky or AVG AV seem to do the trick.

F-Secure was OK but support is quite bad. I've rung a number of times for quite advanced problems, having eliminated the obvious, to be told - uninstall & reinstall. Cheers for that!

Keep up the quality posts - checking your blog at least two times a day at the moment.

Anonymous said...

Hi. Iam having the same issue... after reseting the IIS. its working, but its works only one time. When i log off and login again i get the same communication problem. Is there any permanent solution?

Anonymous said...

It worked for me.
Thanks
Fred