Reed G. Porter at myITforum.com

I received an IM from a coworker asking why certain new machines had not shown up in Altiris yet  If a machine does not make it to Altiris and an alarm come in on it, there is no (easy) way to find the computer having the problem. 

I asked for some node names and started investigating.  Sure enough, it  was not in the Altiris database, so I logged onto the computer.  Everything appeared fine: the Altiris Agent service was running, the client had all the most recent packages and policies, and the logs showed no connectivity issues.  I went ahead and 'tickled' the client by going into the 'About Applet' and clicking 'Update Configuration' and 'Send Basic Inventory.'  Sure enough the computer showed up in the console.

I though that  was a bit weird, but I was ready to attribute it to a permissions issue that was now cleared up or a hung client for whatever reason.  So, I went to the next node on the list.  It too, looked fine, so I tickled it, refreshed the console, and boom there it was. The only problem was the first computer was now gone!  A quick check of both computer's Agents showed them to have identical Altiris GUID's.

The way duplicate GUID's work in Altiris is the last computer that does a configuration request with that GUID is the computer the Altiris console will show.  If there are 300 computers with that GUID the NS Console still only shows one.  So a push in the  traditional sense to a collection of computers with the duplicated GUID will not work as you will only have one computer in the collection at any given time.  What's an Altiris Admin to do?

First you let the image architect know they let a GUID creep into the image, or the packaging team know they captured the GUID in one of their packages.  As far as I know, those are the only two ways the problem can occur. Refer the first group to Altiris: Now a part of Symantec KB Article 19323 on ways to include the client without causing duplicates. Now you can focus on cleaning up the machines already out there.

In this situation, we already know the offending GUID id, so we can deal with it directly.  If you just suspect you may have duplicates and possibly for on-going maintenance, you could follow the steps outlined in this Duplicate Diagnostics Utility.  However, I followed these steps:

1. I created a quick WiseScript package that simply has the following two lines in it:
   Execute C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil.exe /resetguid
   Execute C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil.exe /restart
   
2. Then I created a collection with a filter on Inv_AeX_AC_Client_Agent Resource GUID = the GUID of the clients exhibiting the problem.
   
3. Run the Software Delivery Wizard to:
   Send the above package to the above collection,
   Run as Soon as computer is notified,
   Run on a repeating schedule (set for a few minutes longer than the config request cycle),
   Run as soon as possible...,
   And I set Immediately Notify as there is only one client in the collection at a time

That's it! Over the next day, as clients check in, they will be told to delete their GUID. Then the next time they check in, the NS will issue them a new one.  Once they have a new, GUID, they will fall out of the collection, and return to normally functioning Altiris client once again.