Installed software oscillating

[pemur]

We have a few applications that on repeated scans of the same machine are flagged as 'installed' then 'not installed', despite not changing state. This is making a bit of an unnecessary mess of the history and changes by type reports.

Examples include Dropbox, Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager, Juniper Terminal Services Client, and Team Foundation Sidekick, all of which are visible in Add/Remove programs continuously, and which are very infrequently updated or altered. Other applications on the same client PC do not exhibit this behaviour.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing and come up with an explanation or more hopefully a fix?

Thanks,

Pete

[Hemoco]

Could you contact us at support@lansweeper.com and provide us with the following:
- Screenshot of your web console landing page. You can access your landing page by clicking on the Lansweeper logo in the top left corner of the web console. Please show us the whole page.
- Output of the report below. Replace "YourComputer" with the name of your problem machine.

Select tblComputers.Computername, tblComputers.Domain, tblComputers.Computer,
tblComputers.Firstseen, tblComputers.Lastseen, tblComputers.Lasttriggered,
tblComputers.LastScheduled, tblComputers.LastActiveScan,
tblComputers.LastLsPush, tblComputers.Username, tblComputers.Userdomain,
Web40OSName.OSname, tblOperatingsystem.ServicePackMajorVersion,
tblSoftwareHist.softwareName, tblSoftwareHist.softwareVersion,
tblSoftwareHist.SoftwarePublisher, tblSoftwareHist.Installdate,
tblSoftwareHist.Lastchanged, tblSoftwareHist.Action
From tblComputers Inner Join
tblOperatingsystem On tblComputers.Computername =
tblOperatingsystem.Computername Inner Join
Web40OSName On Web40OSName.Computername = tblComputers.Computername Inner Join
tblSoftwareHist On tblComputers.Computername = tblSoftwareHist.ComputerName
Where tblComputers.Computer = 'YourComputer' And tblSoftwareHist.softwareName Like
'%dropbox%'
Order By tblSoftwareHist.Lastchanged Desc

- Output of the report below. Replace "YourComputer" with the name of your problem machine.

Select Distinct tblComputers.Computername, tblComputers.Domain,
tblComputers.Computer, tblComputers.Firstseen, tblComputers.Lastseen,
tblComputers.Lasttriggered, tblComputers.LastScheduled,
tblComputers.LastActiveScan, tblComputers.LastLsPush, tblCPlogoninfo.Domain As
Domain1, tblCPlogoninfo.Username, tblCPlogoninfo.ADsite
From tblComputers Inner Join
tblCPlogoninfo On tblComputers.Computername = tblCPlogoninfo.Computername
Where tblComputers.Computer = 'YourComputer'

For easy reference, also include a link to this forum thread in your email.

[pemur]

Maybe I could believe that if the software reports were only for machines other than my own: but no-one else logs on to this PC. The scans can be actively run while I'm logged on (as they were this morning) and still show deviant results. The PC is often left running 24*7 with an active login (for remote work from home), so some of the automatic scans are at odd times in the morning when no-one else would be near the machine.

In any event, the only other user profile on the PC belongs to the installation account, last used in December of last year. Sure, the security isn't 100% foolproof, but it's unlikely that anyone else in the organisation would have means, motive and opportunity to perform such a hidden login.

I'll grant that the exceptions do seem to be for user-specific software, but it's not quite as simple as someone else being logged in - and, if I recall correctly, it's only started happening since a recent Lansweeper update (sorry, the old database got junked in December when we migrated to a new environment, so I cannot prove this). We will need to try a few experiments with software explicitly installed for a single user, see how that affects things.

[Hemoco]

Software items like Dropbox are installed "per user", not for the computer as a whole. Lansweeper only keeps information on "per user" software packages for the last logged on user. So what happens is the following:
- Lansweeper scans the computer while user A is logged in. User A has Dropbox installed. Lansweeper therefore reports that Dropbox is installed on the machine.
- Lansweeper rescans the computer while user B is logged in. User B does not have Dropbox installed. Lansweeper therefore reports that the software is gone/uninstalled.

There is currently no way to change this behavior. In a future upgrade we may add the ability to retain "per user" software information for several users at a time.