When a simple copy & paste action fails…

Bummer!

Had a situation where a server didn’t accept a push installation of a SCOM R2 Agent. Error Code: 80070102 was thrown:
 

Contents of error message:

The Operations Manager Server could not start the MOMAgentInstaller service on computer "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" in the time.  This service is used to perform configuration operations on the computer before the System Center Operations Manager agent can be configured. Operation: Agent Install Install account: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Error Code: 80070102 Error Description: (null)

Time to visit Kevin’s blog with the Console based Agent Deployment Troubleshooting table posting. And yes, there it was and how to remedy it:

So I opened an elevated cmd-prompt on the problematic server (W2K08 R2) and ran it. All to no avail. Only an error was shown. When the firewall console was opened, it showed the rule! Somehow the syntax didn’t work out just fine. Checked it, and the command seemed to be OK. So the right syntax was used.

Now what? I copied the same line from the blog again and pasted it in Notepad, in order to take a better look at it. This is what I found:

The quotes are not OK! Time to correct them:

Copied it, ran it on the same server from an elevated cmd-prompt. Now I got the message that two rules were deleted successfully. Pushed the Agent and now all went just fine!

Lesson learned:
Everybody can simply copy & paste anything, anytime. It’s better to use your own brains as well however especially when quotes are involved…

So the posting of Kevin was correct (what else?) but sometimes the quotes end up garbled on web pages. Have seen similar issues before. At the end I felt a bit stupid about it…