Issues with Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager not updating Win32 Clients

For the last three weeks I have struggled to get my SEPM to update win32 clients, what was happening is, only the 64 bit machines running Windows 2008 server were the only machines getting updates from the management server, this was surprising indeed as the SEPM has been functioning without any problems until this point.

Trying to trouble shoot the problem, i started with the usual, reviewing the changes that have taken place between then (meaning when updates were running) and now. I had installed a WSUS server on the same server as my SEPM, so i tried unistalling the WSUS and followed step by step instructions from symantec on how to recover from this situation. all in all, this did not work, it was a desperate situation for me as all my Windows XP and Vista machine ere not updating so I had to allow manual updates.

Yesterday while I was on google, i found a post of almost the same issue with SEPM, so itried the solution and suddenly I had all my client PC's updating.

Briefly this is how i fixed this,

• Log on to ftp://ftp.symantec.com/AVDEFS/symantec_antivirus_corp/jdb/ and download the latest definitions (NB: they will have .jdb extension).
• copy the downloaded Defn to "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager\data\inbox\content\Incoming" (this is on the SEPM server)
• In a period of 30 seconds to a minute the .jdb will be processed and all files and subfolders will be processed

to verify that the SEPM has been updated, open "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager\Inetpub\content\{C60DC234-65F9-4674-94AE-62158EFCA433}" you should see a folder or folders with the ymmddxxx naming convention, look for the current folder , inside it should have a folder named full and a zip file named full as well.

This cleared whatever was blocking my liveupdate, now it's working just fine.