Customers using the Upgrade Assessment Tool on System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 might encounter a problem if they have some individual hotfixes installed that are before Cumulative Update 1. As an example, the problem will occur if you have installed the following hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2801987 .
The problem occurs when you click the Verify button in the Configuration Manager tab of the Upgrade Assessment Tool. As the following screenshot shows, you will get the error message “Version string portion was too short or too long”.
Similarly, the Upgrade Assessment Tool Synchronization Service fails to perform synchronization tasks and will report the same error in its log file, SyncS.log. You can locate this log file in the Upgrade Assessment Tool installation directory. By default, for a 64-bit Windows computer, this folder is C:Program Files (x86)Upgrade Assessment Tool.
To confirm that these problems are caused by specific hotfixes, run the following SQL query against the site database, and check if the Reserved1 field reports NULL for any of the returned rows:
select SiteCode, KbUrl, Reserved1 from InstalledKBList
As an example, you might see the following results that identify one hotfix that is causing this problem for the Upgrade Assessment Tool:
To solve this problem, run the following SQL query as an example, which sets an appropriate value for the Reserved1 field.
update InstalledKBList set Reserved1 = '5.00.7804.1108' where KbUrl = 'http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2801987'
You can find the version number to supply the Reserved1 value by using Control Panel, Program and Features (or run appwiz.cpl ), and then click View installed updates . As an example, you might see the following hotfixes with their version numbers:
Run the SQL query for each identified hotfix. After you have done this, the problem should be resolved and you do not need to restart any services or the site server computer. Click Verify again in the Upgrade Assessment Tool, and you should now see “Verification succeeded”.
-- Martin Li
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.