Security Center seems to be missing the antivirus panel

[Nathan Eady]

I'm in the process of going through all the Windows systems
on the network here to check the expiration dates on the
antivirus protection, so that we can schedule any needed
upgrades and whatnot. In the process of doing so, I
discovered on two systems that the Security Center, rather
including Antivirus, Firewall, and Updates, instead includes
Internet Options, Firewall, and Updates. The Internet Options
are in fact just the same Internet Explorer Options that appear
under Internet Options in the control panel, which also in any
case are irrelevant for us because we have deployed another
browser.

The antivirus is *not* irrelevant, however.

Additionally, "Change the way Security Center notifies me"
on the left is not a clickable link, even when logged in as
domain administrator.

These are XP Pro systems with SP2 installed, and they are
up to date with security updates as of this morning. They
are part what the Windows networking stuff calls a "domain",
but so are a number of other Windows systems that do not
have this issue -- part of the _same_ domain, that is, so I
suspect that is not very relevant.

I've tried to search for this, both the web and Google Groups,
but so far I have turned up nothing very relevant. Has anyone
else encountered this? Apart from uninstalling and reinstalling
SP2, which I'll try to get around to next week if I don't solve this
by then, is there something else I should be looking at?

The systems do not behave as if malware-infested, i.e.,
everything else is normal and smooth, except for this.

I try to encourage safe computing and to isolate the different
segments of the network as much as possible at the firewall,
but some of the users are, well, normal users, so I'd really
prefer to have the antivirus software monitored as well.
Call me paranoid.

I'm not really much of an NT guy (know more about the *nix
side of things and also the other Windows product line, but
only got into XP in the last couple of years, and have only
dealt with an NT/2K domain for the last six months or so
and still feel funny using the word "domain" outside the
context of DNS), so any pointers in the right direction would
be appreciated.

TIA,
Nathan Eady,
Technology Coordinator,
Galion Public Library

 

[redefined]

I'm in the process of going through all the Windows systems
on the network here to check the expiration dates on the
antivirus protection, so that we can schedule any needed
upgrades and whatnot. In the process of doing so, I
discovered on two systems that the Security Center, rather
including Antivirus, Firewall, and Updates, instead includes
Internet Options, Firewall, and Updates. The Internet Options
are in fact just the same Internet Explorer Options that appear
under Internet Options in the control panel, which also in any
case are irrelevant for us because we have deployed another
browser.

The antivirus is *not* irrelevant, however.

Additionally, "Change the way Security Center notifies me"
on the left is not a clickable link, even when logged in as
domain administrator.

These are XP Pro systems with SP2 installed, and they are
up to date with security updates as of this morning. They
are part what the Windows networking stuff calls a "domain",
but so are a number of other Windows systems that do not
have this issue -- part of the _same_ domain, that is, so I
suspect that is not very relevant.

I've tried to search for this, both the web and Google Groups,
but so far I have turned up nothing very relevant. Has anyone
else encountered this? Apart from uninstalling and reinstalling
SP2, which I'll try to get around to next week if I don't solve this
by then, is there something else I should be looking at?

The systems do not behave as if malware-infested, i.e.,
everything else is normal and smooth, except for this.

I try to encourage safe computing and to isolate the different
segments of the network as much as possible at the firewall,
but some of the users are, well, normal users, so I'd really
prefer to have the antivirus software monitored as well.
Call me paranoid.

I'm not really much of an NT guy (know more about the *nix
side of things and also the other Windows product line, but
only got into XP in the last couple of years, and have only
dealt with an NT/2K domain for the last six months or so
and still feel funny using the word "domain" outside the
context of DNS), so any pointers in the right direction would
be appreciated.

TIA,
Nathan Eady,
Technology Coordinator,
Galion Public Library

Nathan,

Make sure the Security Center service is running on those machines. If
it's not running you will see the screen you're describing.

Roman

 

[Nathan Eady]

Thanks for the tip. Sure enough, the Security Center service is
not running. That's odd, since it's set to Automatic startup...

Hmmm... When I try to start this service, it starts and stops:
"The Security Center service on Local Computer started
and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if
they have no work to do, for example, the Performance
Logs and Alerts service."

This doesn't seem to me like the type of service that ought
to stop if it has no work to do, though, if it needs to be running
for stuff in the control panel to work. I imagine that means it's
running into trouble somehow. Does it write error messages
to some kind of system error log I could look at, or how would
I go about diagnosing something like this? I tried pulling the
contents of the "path to executable" field out of the Properties
and running it at the command line, but it didn't output anything
at all.

I looked in the Properties of the service, and it lists two
dependencies: Remote Procedure Call(RPC) and Windows
Management Instrumentation. These are both started. Just
for grins, I restarted the latter, but the option to restart RPC
was for some reason not present (is that as odd as it seems
to me, or are some services just not restartable without
rebooting in Windows?). I also started the RPC Locator
service, and the Windows Management Instrumentation Driver
Extensions, as well as the WMI Performance Adaptor,
because they seemed potentially related. However, the
Security Center still starts and stops right away when I
try to start it.

Is there something else relevant in the service properties,
that I've overlooked?

Where do I go from here?

 

[redefined]

Thanks for the tip. Sure enough, the Security Center service is
not running. That's odd, since it's set to Automatic startup...

Hmmm... When I try to start this service, it starts and stops:
"The Security Center service on Local Computer started
and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if
they have no work to do, for example, the Performance
Logs and Alerts service."

This doesn't seem to me like the type of service that ought
to stop if it has no work to do, though, if it needs to be running
for stuff in the control panel to work. I imagine that means it's
running into trouble somehow. Does it write error messages
to some kind of system error log I could look at, or how would
I go about diagnosing something like this? I tried pulling the
contents of the "path to executable" field out of the Properties
and running it at the command line, but it didn't output anything
at all.

I looked in the Properties of the service, and it lists two
dependencies: Remote Procedure Call(RPC) and Windows
Management Instrumentation. These are both started. Just
for grins, I restarted the latter, but the option to restart RPC
was for some reason not present (is that as odd as it seems
to me, or are some services just not restartable without
rebooting in Windows?). I also started the RPC Locator
service, and the Windows Management Instrumentation Driver
Extensions, as well as the WMI Performance Adaptor,
because they seemed potentially related. However, the
Security Center still starts and stops right away when I
try to start it.

Is there something else relevant in the service properties,
that I've overlooked?

Where do I go from here?

Look through the suggestions given here and see if any of them will
work for you.

http://tinyurl.com/hxsxj

Roman

 

[Nathan Eady]

That (specifically, the change made in the GP editor) did it.

Wow, I guess I need to bite the bullet and learn this
Group Policy stuff, now that we've got Windows XP
systems on the network, plus a rather important 2K3
system. I'd been thinking it wasn't vital for a small
and heterogenous network like ours, but I guess
that's not the case.