Microsoft KB Archive/277674

= SMS: Smsiddup Utility Identifies Current and Historical Duplicates =

Article ID: 277674

Article Last Modified on 10/18/2005

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Systems Management Server 1.2 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q277674



SYMPTOMS
The Smsiddup.exe utility is included with Systems Management Server (SMS) 1.2 Service Pack 4 (SP4) to identify duplicate SMSIDs that may be produced as a result of &quot;cloning&quot; SMS clients. Even if duplicates that are identified by Smsiddup have been removed and their inventory records have been removed from the SMS Administrator console, Smsiddup may still report their presence in subsequent reports.



CAUSE
Smsiddup produces a report of duplicate SMSIDs that are contained not only in current hardware inventory but also in hardware inventory history. Therefore, if computers that are identified as having duplicate SMSIDs are deleted in the SMS Administrator console, they are still identified by Smsiddup because the current inventory record is moved to inventory history instead of being deleted. This SMS functionality is by design.

Because inventory history is typically purged by using the Delete Special command in the SMS Administrator console, duplicate SMSIDs are eventually removed from the database completely. (See the &quot;More Information&quot; section of this article for information about using the Delete Special command.)

If you depend on the Smsiddup reports to identify current duplicates, it can become difficult to distinguish current duplicates from those that have already been deleted. The hotfix that is described in this article enables you to optionally delete inventory records that are identified as duplicates by Smsiddup.



RESOLUTION
A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem that this article describes. Apply it only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

To resolve this problem, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services telephone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support

Note In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:   Date     Time   Version  Size   File name     Platform --  9/22/00  18:13  786      15 KB  Smsiddup.exe  Intel 9/22/00 18:13  786      22 KB  Smsiddup.exe  Alpha



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. `



MORE INFORMATION
The updated version of Smsiddup.exe includes an option to delete duplicate SMSIDs from inventory history. Smsiddup does not delete duplicate SMSIDs that are current and visible in the SMS Administrator console. You must therefore delete the duplicate SMSIDs when duplicate SMSIDs are first reported.

When you use the option to delete duplicate SMSIDs, those computer records that are identified are deleted from inventory history. This does not affect the inventory history for other computers for which that inventory history may be required for reporting purposes. This prevents you from having to use the Delete Special command with the Machine history records older than 0 days setting to purge all duplicate SMSIDs from the database.

Interactive and Command-Line Use of the Updated Smsiddup.exe
When you use the updated Smsiddup tool with no command-line arguments, Smsiddup prompts you for the following information:

Enter SQL Server name:

Enter database name:

User:

Enter password:

Delete historical duplicate ?(Y/N):

The following command-line arguments and order are supported with the updated tool:

smsiddup   

For example: smsiddup smssqlsrv sa sapasswd sms y

Note that the last parameter can be ignored and defaults to N (No).

Smsiddup also supports Microsoft SQL Server integrated security. If you are using integrated security with the interactive use of Smsiddup, you can leave the logon and password entries blank. In command-line mode, use quotation marks (&quot;) to delimit the logon and password entries. For example:

smsiddup smssqlsrv &quot;&quot; &quot;&quot; sms y

Using the &quot;Delete Special&quot; Command to Delete Computer History
The deletion of inventory history in SMS 1.2 is not an automatic process. Computer history grows as computers supply inventory data that contains differences in the information that is supplied in subsequent inventory MIF files. For example, disk information such as &quot;%Disk Full&quot; for hard disks changes regularly as files are saved and deleted from the disk. You should delete inventory history as an administrative task at regular intervals to delete inventory history that is older than a predetermined age.

The Delete Special command is available on the Edit menu in the SMS Administrator console while the Sites window is active (or has the focus). The default option is to delete computers with the last activity. To delete computer history records, click Machine History Records in the Delete box. You can purge computer history records from the SMS database based on dates or age.

Deleting history records is a two-step process. In the first step, you use the Delete Special command as described above. This purges the computer records but does not actually delete the inventory information that is recorded in other SMS SQL database tables. This data effectively becomes &quot;orphaned&quot; and must be deleted in the second step. In the second step, you use the SMS Database Manager tool (Dbclean). On the Tools menu, click Delete Unused Common/Specific Records. This command deletes the orphaned inventory data that was created in the first step.

Additional query words: prodsms smsiddup exe

Keywords: kbhotfixserver kbqfe kbbug kbfix kbqfe KB277674

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