System Update fails after recent update

[kab]

So: System update came out in July. Ran it a few times, it found updates and installed them. (This is on a T23 running XP2 Pro). About three weeks ago when it was doing its thing it said it found an update for itself. On the fly it downloaded that, installed the update, and asked for a reboot. Did that, ran the program again - and it failed.

Forget the stuff about not being able to find an update server. In this case it said it had an error in collecting user information.

Read the help file, read the troubleshooting section. Went into regedit and made the debug stuff "fine", ran the System Update again.

So: It's trying to run this program, "egather2.exe". When it does so the log says that the system update, or egather2, or something, doesn't have "sufficient permissions" and dumps an error code which stops the whole system update program in its tracks.

One cannot revert to the previous System Update program. Uninstalling and reinstalling the previous System Update results in the old version finding the new version on line, lather, rinse, repeat.

Calls into IBM/Lenovo result in nada; it seems that nobody over there has any knowledge about the software at all. Broken hardware, yes: Broken System Update, no.

Running egather2 manually from a DOS prompt, using the same calling parameters as gleamed from the log file, result in complete success.

Anybody else run into this? Of course, the Software Installer still works just fine, but this whole business is kind of irritating.

KAB

[jfsmith]

Hi,

I had that exact problem. In my case, uninstalling IE7 Beta 3 cleared it. I like Opera 9 better, anyhow

[Kyocera]

Could have been a conflict with the new phishing feature of IE7 or your installed adware/spyware or AV software.

[kab]

Uninstalled IE7B3, did a microsoft security update on IE6, then ran System Update. Worked like a charm.

Some of my searching around on google showed that, at one time, the egather program was some kind of a security hole. Apparently it is, or was, an ActiveX control. As such other, malicious people could run it remotely and gather way too much information on the target.

My guess: Some kind of ActiveX security process inside of Windows/IE prevents the egather2 program from running. Nickel bet says that when Microsoft pushes out IE7 as a security update all those Lenovo systems with System Update are going to all start failing at once. I wonder if Lenovo knows?

K. Becker

[unitedunited]

egather was part of IBM's software installer package. I got to know it because symantec anti-virus always picked it up and I had to run a patch to get it to stop. I suspect egather2 is part of the System Update package.

[Nick Y]

I am not running IE7 -and rarely use IE6, but it is installed.

A recent Lenovo upgrade stopped System Update working; after about 9% it stops with a message 'Searching for Updates: Exception not Expected was encountered.'

I have uninstalled/ reinstalled System Update several times ( Version: 2.00.0084 Build date: 2006-07-11); tried running egather2 but, so far, nothing will make it go any further. BTW, System Installer seems to be OK.

Tried looking around updates on Lenovo, but all I found was a means to say how pleased I am with Software Updater; so I left a message indicating that I thought it is as bad as CSS7 and that they seem to have lost the plot.

Did I feel better? I don't know, but I do know that, fairly obviously, they will take no notice whatsoever!

Any suggestions, please (wrt System Updater)?

TIA,

Nick

[emorphien]

I was having issues with my system installer. Just updated it the other day, and now when it searches for updates, the progress bar gets halfway, pauses for a second and then disappears. It seems I can no longer search for and download updates.

I've switched to system update but it gets stuck in the middle of updating itself.

[Nick Y]

Wrt to problem mentioned above, I looked at the log for System Update. An interesting section of it is listed below, after making a connection to my proxy server ('www-cache.xxxx.co.uk'):
===============snip==================

Info 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvt.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.HttpAndDirectConnection(Uri uri, Connection connection)
Message: proxy: ftp=www-cache.xxxx.co.uk port: 8080

Severe 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvt.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.HttpAndDirectConnection(Uri uri, Connection connection)
Message: System exception at HttpAndDirectConnection

Severe 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvsu.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)
Message: An error ocurred getting a connection settings bean:
Exception:
Message: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.
Type: System.UriFormatException
at Tvt.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.Connect(Uri uri)
at Tvt.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)
at Tvsu.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)

Severe 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvsu.Engine.Task.Task.StartExecution()
Message: An error occurred while the task: ApplicableUpdatesTask executed the process: HelpCenterQuestProcessthe message from exception isInvalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.
Exception:
Message: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.
Type: System.UriFormatException
at Tvsu.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)
at Tvsu.Engine.Process.HelpCenterQuestProcess.SetValues()
at Tvsu.Engine.Process.HelpCenterQuestProcess.PreProcess()
at Tvsu.Engine.Task.Task.Start()
at Tvsu.Engine.Task.Task.StartExecution()

Info 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvsu.Gui.CustomComponents.Step.set_Image(StepImage value)
Message: Setting FAILED status.

Severe 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvsu.Gui.GUIController.ShowErrorMessage(Exception e)
Message: This exception was NOT expected. This is supposed to never be logged.
Exception:
Message: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.
Type: System.UriFormatException
at Tvsu.Engine.Task.Task.StartExecution()
at Tvsu.Sdk.SuSdk.GetApplicableUpdates()
at Tvsu.Gui.Util.ProgressThread.InitSearch()

Info 2006-08-18 , 12:45:19
at Tvsu.Gui.FlowScreens.Messages.ShowMessage(String message, String title, String mastheadtext, MessageType t, Boolean check, IWin32Window owner)
Message: Showing ERROR Message: < Exception Not Expected was encountered! >
===============snip==================


'The hostname could not be parsed.' Does this mean that the problem is that Security Update does not know the address for updates?

Perhaps someone here will recognise the cause of the problem.

Nick

[Nick Y]

Back again: I think that I have found the problem (-often the case straight after posting; a case of Sod's law?)

Deleted my proxy and it works. Re-instated the proxy and it fails.

Looked for offending phrase and found:
===============snip===============

Info 2006-08-19 , 06:47:52
at Tvsu.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)
Message: Connection settings bean found for download.boulder.ibm.com

===============snip===============

So it appears that Software Update does not like proxies. That is clever...

[kab]

Back again: I think that I have found the problem (-often the case straight after posting; a case of Sod's law?)

Deleted my proxy and it works. Re-instated the proxy and it fails.

Looked for offending phrase and found:
===============snip===============

Info 2006-08-19 , 06:47:52
at Tvsu.ConnectionSettings.ConnectionSettings.GetConnectionForURL(String url)
Message: Connection settings bean found for download.boulder.ibm.com

===============snip===============

So it appears that Software Update does not like proxies. That is clever...

Umm... Being the original poster on this thread, I think I disagree. I use this thing from within a firewall complete with proxy and, once I got rid of the IE7 stuff, it's been working quite well with no problems.

I do note that in the troubleshooting section of the System Update help file there's some discussion of what types of proxy servers System Update supports and which it doesn't.. So that might be your problem.

I might also note that my perusal of the logs with >my< problem, it turned out that it was a permissions problem: That is, whatever program it was that was trying to run egather2.exe, did not (at least, according to the codes returned to System Update) have sufficient permissions to do so. Kind of like Unix/Linux where a program that isn't in the same group tries to run a program that has permissions set for another group/user.

So, I suspect that the problem is probably because some ActiveX control or some such was modified by the installation of IE7B3, and it's that control that's trying to run egather2. Windows NT and on can have very fine-grained security, although there are programming practices that ignore that or require that everybody run as Administrator. What I suspect is that IE7B3 has somewhat better locked-down security than IE6 and, when System Update runs, it calls methods that are installed by IE7B3, and those methods don't let the assumption of "Everything is Administrator" (or whatever the heck it is) pass on through.

Since System Update requires Microsoft .Net to run, and .Net is heavily integrated into IE, none of this really surprises me. However, it's going to interesting over at Lenovo when the IE7 "security update" hits the Microsoft Update web site and all of those installations of System Update fall on their faces. You heard it here first!

(Yeah - and somebody remind Microsoft to come up with a good reason why IE is so heavily integrated into Windows so that situations like this pop up so often!)

K. Becker