Novell Zenworks Agent Service fails to start

  • 7022613
  • 30-Jan-2018
  • 01-Feb-2018

Environment

ZENworks Configuration Management

Situation

The Novell Zenworks Agent Service is shown as 'not running' in Windows Services Management Console.
When trying to start the service manually, a pop-up appears informing that the service could not be started.
Windows events log shows the exception

Service cannot be started. System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for

'Novell.Zenworks.Resolver.BuildConfig' threw an exception. ---> System.ArgumentException: Illegal characters in path.
   at System.IO.Path.CheckInvalidPathChars(String path, Boolean checkAdditional)
   at System.IO.Path.Combine(String path1, String path2)
   at Novell.Zenworks.Resolver.BuildConfig.InitializeBuildConfig(String installPath)
   at Novell.Zenworks.Resolver.BuildConfig..cctor()
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at ZENWindowsService.Service1.OnStart(String[] args)
   at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase.ServiceQueuedMainCallback(Object state)

Resolution

Verify if the value of the registry key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Novell\ZCM\AgentInstallPath
is set correctly. The value of this key should have the path where Zenworks is installed and should not contain any double quote characters (").
Example :
It should be D:\Program Files (x86)\Novell\ZENworks  instead of "D:\Program Files (x86)\Novell\ZENworks"

Cause

The value of the registry key contains characters which are not supported.

Additional Information

It has been observed that the change of the registry key occurred after Windows updates have been installed and the server was rebooted. It could not be duplicated thus it could not be determined if the changed was done by any of the updates or the reboot.