When your agents appear in the management console as question marks it means that the agents are in an unknown state. Several issues are most commonly responsible. These include:

  • The agent is unable to connect

  • The connection to the service is blocked

  • The installed service is not running

  • The agent is not able to activate

  • The agent is unable to update

  • The service installation failed, but the Cloud Agent is running

When an agent cannot connect, run the Communications Test on the agent for clues. You can gather more information by using ping or trace route to collect connectivity information for heartbeat.s2.spn.com and message.s2.spn.com. Your firewall may be an obstacle. Your firewall must allow the sites that are required for the service.

See Internet access requirements.

Confirm with your firewall administrator that the listed sites are allowed.

Your agents are comprised of a platform component and service components. Your services plug into the platform. If you suspect the problem is with the service component, remove it and reinstall. However, if the source of the problem is not clear, uninstall and then reinstall the entire agent.

If the agent is not able to activate, see if the Auto-confirm new computers option is turned off. The options are under Settings->Preferences. On the Computers page, on the left pane, under Quick Tasks, the Requiring Confirmation link opens the Confirm Computers page. Unconfirmed agents are listed and may be activated from the Confirm Computers page.

When your agents cannot update properly or services fail to install even though the platform component is running, test connectivity. In some cases, restarting the computer may solve the problem. After the restart, you can manually check for software updates from the agent's user interface. Use the About>Check for Latest Software interface option. If the Endpoint Protection service fails to install after those tests, check to see:

  • If no other antivirus software is installed on the computer.

  • You have administrator rights to the computer.

Note:

Scheduled outages or production issues may cause unknown agents. You can check the News Alerts on the Home page to determine if the unknown agents are due to a known issue or scheduled activity.

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