KACE Product Support

Hello all,

I am currently in charge of a K1000 at our local university. The machine has been largely under-utilized, and I have been charged with the task of justifying its cost by leveraging its capabilities for maximum benefit. Initially I have been able to accomplish things like Windows Updates, pushing out new files and programs, etc. The situation is made more difficult by the fact that our institution runs Deep Freeze on all machines, so I have had to make allowances by setting up maintenance windows, booting into thawed mode, etc.

I have made it through all of that. At this point, however, we would like to make use of the software metering capabilities of the K1000. This appears to present some challenges of its own.

I have enabled monitoring on a few test machines, but from the look of the logs, things do not appear to be going as they should. A Software Metering log shows up on the client machines, and according to it, the metering process keeps checking for a text file, which it reports as not existing. It then does not say anything about creating the needed file. It also reports downloading an .exe (presumably to handle the software metering on the client machine), but it does this about 10 times, then about an hour or so later it repeats the process, and so on.

I have disabled metering for now, so I would like to ask, does anyone on these forums have experience with Software Metering and Deep Freeze? Are there some scripts/processes/procedures that someone can point me to in order to make this work properly?

I might also note that, for some time, Microsoft has frowned on programs that create data files in the Program Files installation directory. I gather with Windows Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft is becoming more and more obstinate about not permitting programs to write to their install directories. As I read in the logs, it appears that the K1000 agent is trying to download the .exe into its Program Files/KACE directory. It is also trying to create the text file there to log the software metering. If I am correct in my observations, is there a way to prevent this behavior? Can the client be directed somehow to put its data files in a different directory - %TEMP% for instance. Then, with Deep Freeze, if the client reboots and the file disappears, does everything have to start over from scratch again?

How to prevent these things? I would appreciate anyone pointing me in the right direction.