Probe troubleshooting

Probes in a status other than Normal will result in further misconfigured or stale services, failed patch management and agent deployment as well as many other issues. The first thing to check is that the probe is running.

  1. At the Service Organization level, click Administration > Probes.
  2. Locate the probe at issue and ensure the Windows Software Probe service is installed and running. It may need to be restarted.

N-able N-central probes require .NET version 4.5.2. If for some reason .NET fails, the probe service may fail as well.

Reset the password and account

As outline in the topic Create a probe administrator account, it is recommended you create a Domain Administrator account for the probe to use, with a complex password that will not expire. If the password does expire, or an upgrade does not complete successfully you will see the probe fail due to credential issues.

Resetting the password and account doesn't touch the credentials the probe uses for things like discovery jobs. Best practice is to reinstall the probe using the new correct credentials.

  1. Log on to the server or device that hosts your probe.
  2. Run the Windows application services.msc on the probe device to view system services.
  3. Stop the following probe services:
  • Windows Software Probe Maintenance service
  • Windows Software Probe service
  • Windows Software Probe Syslog service
  1. Right-click the Windows Software Probe service and click the Log On tab.
  2. Enter the new Domain Administrator credentials, and click Apply.
  3. Click the General tab and in the Start parameters field enter:

    4. username=yourDomain\User password=Yourpa$$word

  4. Click Start.
  5. Re-start the other Windows software probe services.

Reinstall the probe

If you decide to re-install the probe, manually install the appropriate customer specific probe directly on top of the existing one on the customer’s server. The first time you launch the installer it will remove the existing probe.

You will need to run it a second time to install a new probe service.

Install the probe on a different system

If you choose to install the probe on a different system, do not delete the existing probe until you have performed a task transfer.

Click Administration > Probes and to move the requirements of the probe to the new device. For more information, see Transfer tasks from one probe to another.

If these options do not resolve your issues, contact N-able technical support.