Remember this?: Re-run Advertisement for one (or more) specific client(s) with ConfigMgr 2007

I’m not sure if this is going to be a ‘remember this’ –series, but at least in this case it fits really good. We all know it, but sometimes we need a refreshment.

RegLocX64We all know those scenario’s where we send an Advertisement to a Collection of clients and for some reason we may want to rerun the Advertisement for only one (or more) specific client(s). In this case we can use the general rerun options of an Advertisement (like always rerun), but they will affect all clients in the collection and won’t work for user-targeted Advertisements. So what’s left in this case? Well the option I like the most is that there is a registry change that we can make to trick the Advertisement to run again. When we look at a client’s registry, we will see the following the following registry key (depending on the architecture). 

  • x86 – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS\Mobile Client\Software Distribution\Execution History\System\
  • x64 – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SMS\Mobile Client\Software Distribution\Execution History\System\ (see picture)

As this key is located in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, it can also be found by opening regedit and then make a connection with a remote client. Under System we will find the PackageID of each Package that has previously run. When we now delete the PackageID, for the Program that we want to rerun, it will trigger the Program to run again (during the next evaluation) even though it already completed successfully.

To find the PackageID that we need we can open the Configuration Manager Console and select the Packages –node (under Site Database > Computer Management > Software Distribution). In the overview there will be a list of all the packages with the corresponding PackageID.

8 thoughts on “Remember this?: Re-run Advertisement for one (or more) specific client(s) with ConfigMgr 2007”

  1. I tried and its not working.The execution can be triggered if we make changes to the wmi in the client.Did this work for you?

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  2. Hi Peter,
    I was wondering if there is a registry key in the Package which will tell me if the Program has downloaded the content (source file to the client)
    This my scenario – I want to create a shortcut (shortcut is a script to run an advertised program from Run advertised program) in the user’s desktop if the advertised package is has downloaded the content and so user can run the advertisement.
    Under that key ‘_State’ does it show ‘downloaded content’ or something like that as a status so I can add this an Item level targeting to shortcut deployment
    Regards,
    Sabi

    Reply
  3. Thanks for the post! I had several machines that would not run a required upgrade TS. When opening Software Center, the button to run manually was “Reinstall”. I found the package id and the registry and deleted it, ran a policy update and the TS started running.

    One thing that was different on my systems, the reg key is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS\Mobile Client\Software Distribution\Execution History\System\. It was not located in the “WOW6432Node” even though all my devices are x64

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