I'm going braindead after fighting a few machines like this today...
I have a laptop that was off for over a month. I started updating it today and got an SEP message that a file was missing. The laptop restarted. I didn't get a chance to see exactly which file it wanted. It look a while to restart and voila... SEP was uninstalled. I know it was on here before for sure, plus I had the SEP error message.
I tried to reinstall. No luck. It will start but eventually I get this... "Symantec Endpoint Protection has detected that there are pending system changes that require a reboot. Please reboot the system and rerun the installation." I figured it was waiting on Windows updates we have forced through group policy so I did all the Windows update. Still no luck. Same error message.
I went on SEPM and found the computer. It's got an orange down arrow and a red circle with a white x in it. I deleted that and tried reinstalling. Same thing -- SEP detected pending system changes.... I restart, try to reinstall SEP, no luck.
Right now, it appears to have no AV on it. I tried renaming the c:\program files\Symantec folder. No luck.
Questions...
Does SEP automatically uninstall itself if a machine hasn't been used for a while? I could understand forcing updates to be installed or even forcing a reboot to install program changes. I don't see the point of leaving it unprotected though. Occasionally we do have laptops that we don't see for a month or... four-ish. I'm stuck when the user doesn't bring their laptop back. Most of the time, they're not using it so it's not a huge concern if it's not updated. And we have Symantec now so that should catch anything that gets in... except it appears to have uninstalled itself.
How do I get Symantec installed on this thing again? I'm out of ideas.
How do I prevent this from happening again? It's not unrealistic that I won't see a laptop for a few months. I just installed SEP on another laptop I haven't seen since Nov 2012. I might not see that again for months. But that's the situation here for a few laptops.
Why won't this install again? I thought if I removed it from SEPM and reinstalled on the laptop that would work. SEP isn't in the programs list anymore. I don't see a way to uninstall SEP, but I renamed the programs folder folder.
It's a Windows 7 Enterprise laptop. Everything's updated. I've restarted it many times. I'm thinking it's sitting here unprotected now, and I'm wondering what would have happened if the user started it... Would SEP see itself as out-of-date and uninstall itself?
