Display Notifications and Available Software Updates not in System Tray
I am deploying patches to Windows 2000/2003 servers and usually I suppress display messages and set a deadline to make the updates mandatory. That works fine. In some cases on special servers we want the software update deployment to be manual so that an admin can login to the server and manually run the deployment from the systray when they are ready. Problem is, the icon is not showing in the systray at all. I can see that the machines got policy and they have downloaded updates and they show a status of downloaded updates so all appears healthy there. Cannot figure out why I don't see the icon in the systray. I am allowing display notifications on clients in the deployment. I checked and I do not have the site wide setting to hide display notifications set on the SUP client agent. Even if I did, from what I have read, I would still see the icon but not the balloon popups. I don't really care about the balloon popups whether they appear or not, I just want the systray icon so the patches can be launched manually. Any ideas? I am logging into the servers via remote desktop. Not sure if that plays a role. I remeber in the past certain items not displaying when connected through terminal services so not sure if that is going on. Without the icon is there any other way to manually launch the deployment (ie. an exe).
Answers
Unless the site wide hide deployments option is selected, you will get icons in the system tray. When that is selected, you do NOT get icons at all. If this is enabled, but you suppress the deployment itself, then you get the icons but not balloons. So what you read is not correct from what I know.
Oh, and if through terminal services you do NOT get icons, so that would be an issue. If you are going through terminal services/RDP, then that is expected.
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Unless the site wide hide deployments option is selected, you will get icons in the system tray. When that is selected, you do NOT get icons at all. If this is enabled, but you suppress the deployment itself, then you get the icons but not balloons. So what you read is not correct from what I know.
Oh, and if through terminal services you do NOT get icons, so that would be an issue. If you are going through terminal services/RDP, then that is expected.
- Hmmm. Definitely seems to be RDP issue. Should have mentioned I am running Vista SP1 RC. Running Remote Desktop as "mstsc /admin" shows the icon in the systray. "/admin" appears to be new SP1 RC and I think replaces "/console". Running Remote Desktops from Windows 2003 Server seems to work also. A little confused but this doesn't appear to be an SCCM issue.
The Vista info makes a difference (though I know nothing about Vista SP1 if it changes anything). But for Vista/Windows Server 2008, we actually do show icons if in console mode, but only to the first person who has the session. If anyone else comes along with a console session, after the icons have been displayed to someone else, they don't appear again.
As you stated, it is an OS thing, not an SCCM thing. But it is confusing to people.
- Well, the client was Windows Server 2003. I was using Vista SP1 RC to remote into that server client to look for the icon in the systray. My reason for bringing up Vista SP1 was that I figured "mstsc /console" would show me what I wanted to see but it did not. What I think I discovered is that with Vista SP1 the "/console" parameter is not valid anymore but does not throw an error so I thought I was going in with console mode when in fact I was not, which led me to initially think it was an SCCM issue with the deployment. In Vista SP1 it appears the "/console" parameter was replaced with "/admin". When I used "mstsc /admin" I could see what I needed and all was well.
I have another issue with this now. I resolved the issue with Windows 2003 server since I can remotely connect to a console session using Remote Desktop. But for Windows 2000 server, I don't think I can connect to a console using remote desktop, even with the /console or /admin option. So the icons never show for a Windows 2000 server. Is there any trick to run the updates if you cannot see the icons? Is there an exe that will run them?
Unfortunately not for Windows 2000. If I recall correctly, it is a limitation in that OS that the icons don't appear. This came up with one of my TAP customers, and the resolution from dev was that you have to either make the deployments mandatory, so no user intervention, or you had to log in locally to see them and initiate the deployment manually through the icon.
It might be possible to do something with the SDK here, but I'm not an SDK guy.
- Hello
Thanks to the search I have the exact same issue, a year afterwards.
The notification icon not showing up in non-console sessions for windows 2003 servers, is this still the intended way?
I would really like to know if there is a workaround/fix to have the notification show up in RDP sessions. We have a lot of servers that are "user-managed" and it would be helpful for some to see these pop-up when they are logged in.
We are still running the RTM SCCM/WSUS 3.0 SP1 so if this was fixed in SP1 or R2 that would be awesome too.
Thank you Hello
Hi,
Thanks to the search I have the exact same issue, a year afterwards.
The notification icon not showing up in non-console sessions for windows 2003 servers, is this still the intended way?
I would really like to know if there is a workaround/fix to have the notification show up in RDP sessions. We have a lot of servers that are "user-managed" and it would be helpful for some to see these pop-up when they are logged in.
We are still running the RTM SCCM/WSUS 3.0 SP1 so if this was fixed in SP1 or R2 that would be awesome too.
Thank you
I have the same issue also... I'm running R2 and it isn't solved unfortunatly.
I really don't want to connect to my servers with the /console, so hopefully there will be an solution soon!- Hi,
Have the same issue, can't believe Microsoft hasn't thought about this or fixed the problem which has been around for a long time. We are using latest SCCM and this is an issue as even through control panel "Configuration Manager" there seems no way to run these updates or even check which updates are pending. Only way to do this seem to be throughicon and this is only seen if accessed via /console.
Any workarounds to check and manually install pending updates? - Bringing this thread to life again. Any plans on removing the console session requirement to get notified for optional software update deployments? BR Chris
- Edited byJLCM Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:23 PM
- Include me in on this! We've just started to make updates available to servers and have run into this issue :( What an ____!
Mind you, with Windows 2000 Server with just months left on it's life cycle, this might be the time to upgrade to Windows 2003 Server :) - Me too! Just had one of our developers complain to me because his 2003 build boxes rebooted in the middle of the night and he never saw the notification for the updates before they became mandatory.
