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Windows Update Sensor - Access denied creating an instance of the COM component

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I am having trouble getting the windows update sensor to work with a non-administrator account - I get the following error: Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {4CB43D7F-7EEE-4906-8698-60DA1C38F2FE} from the IClassFactory failed due to the following error: 80070005 Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)).

If I add the user account to the Administrators group on the server then the sensor works fine, but for obvious reasons I do not want my account to be a member of the administrators group. I am using Server 2012R2.

My testing so far:

According to the article at https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/71899-problems-with-windows-update-status-sensor, a key part of the powershell script is 'New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session'.

I can run this piece of code successfully in a non-administrator user account when logged on to an desktop session such as my personal user account. However I cannot run this code successfully when running the code in a remote powershell session using the same user account.

The code does run successfully in a remote powershell session for an administrator account.

So, what specific permissions to I need to add to my account to be able to successfully run this in a remote powershell session? Anyone else have this scenario working?

permissions powershell prtg remote-powershell windows-update

Created on Aug 9, 2017 10:02:52 PM



9 Replies

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Hi mpnzhc,

Is the user you're trying to use a member of the Distributed DCOM Users group?

Kind regards,
Stephan Linke, Tech Support Team

Created on Aug 11, 2017 8:04:22 AM by Stephan Linke [Paessler Support]



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Yes, the account is a member of both Distributed DCOM Users and Performance Monitor Users.

Created on Aug 15, 2017 8:34:39 PM



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I have come to the conclusion that the user must be a member of the administrators group. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa387288?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Created on Aug 17, 2017 1:38:17 AM



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And it works now? :)

Created on Aug 17, 2017 8:51:18 AM by Stephan Linke [Paessler Support]



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No, I do not want to elevate my probe account to an administrator. I have implemented an alternative solution to using this sensor, involving running a scheduled task on the target machine and fetching the results using remote powershell.

Created on Aug 17, 2017 9:40:05 AM



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That's what the new update sensor will do basically. The workaround is only temporary then :) Please keep an eye on https://www.paessler.com/prtg/history/stable to see when it's released shortly.

Created on Aug 17, 2017 10:08:06 AM by Stephan Linke [Paessler Support]



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Long shot on this one, but mpnzhc, I'm running into the same problem. Powershell remoting to call Windows Update API requires local admin on the destination server, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wua_sdk/using-wua-from-a-remote-computer.

Would you be willing to share your solution scripts?

Created on Feb 10, 2021 3:03:58 PM

Last change on Mar 19, 2021 4:00:54 PM by Felix Wiesneth [Paessler Support]



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Hi Randy, I never actually implemented this - what I was going to do was schedule a task to run Get-WindowsUpdate (from the PSWindowsUpdate powershell module), dump the results to csv and pick them up with with the custom sensor. Now that you've reminded me I might give it a crack later today.

Created on Feb 24, 2021 12:47:45 AM



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Hello Dear customer

I have not seen this to be proposed on this latest version. It will be awsome if you can elevate a feature request by following this article https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/79245-how-can-i-propose-new-features-or-sensors-for-prtg

Created on Sep 2, 2022 7:34:11 PM by Ricardo Sanchez [Paessler Technical Support]




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