Clients are unable to connect to the SMP Server (NS) or any other task server. The registration process fails with errors and or informational log entries:

Failed to Handle request to a service: RegisterClient. Value cannot be null. Parameter name: s

Failed to initialize security context for: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

ITMS 8.x

The NSresourceguid value was not added to the coresetting.config during the install of task management

Option 1:

This option refers when you want to keep the value already present in the database and this value is the same between the database and the one displayed in the Symantec Management Agent UI but the one in the Coresettings.config is the one that is different.

1. Modify the coresettings.config and add the following value under the <!-- Core TM --> section.

--------------------------------------------
  <customSetting key="NSResourceGuid" type="local" value="{1226feff-9f39-4c71-aee8-3ff1bf242234}" />
--------------------------------------------

2. Adjust the value of the NSResourceGuid value to match what is returned by the following query:

select Name, Value
from ServerSettingGuids
where name in ('NSResourceGuid','OwnerNSGuid')

3. Also verify that the OwnerNSGuid value in Coresettings.config matches the same value in the above query.

Option 2:

This option refers when you want to keep the value already present in the Symantec Management Agent UI but the one in the database and the one in the Coresettings.config is different.

1. Please compare these two GUIDs: Symantec Management Agent (SMA) GUID displayed in the SMA UI on the Agent Setting page, and CoreSettings.config "NSResourceGuid" key. This is located (by default) at: C:\ProgramData\Symantec\SMP\Settings. You will need to find string "NSResourceGuid" inside the .config file and compare it with the GUID we see in the SMA UI settings page.
2. If the GUIDs are different then you will need to replace the "NSResourceGuid" key in CoreSettings.config with the SMA GUID.
3. After this is replaced, restart the Altiris Service, Symantec Management Agent service, Altiris Object Host Service and Altiris Client Task Data Loader Service. Once you do this you should see Client Task Agents connecting for Task.