You receive an error when you try to change a display name by using Software Inventory Client Agent Properties in Systems Management Server 2003

In Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS), when you try to change a display name by using the Software Inventory Client Agent Properties dialog box, you may receive the following error message:

When you use Software Inventory Client Agent Properties to change a display name, display name mapping rules are updated one at a time. If you have inventoried names that overlap, this problem may occur when you change the display name of these inventoried names. For example, the following inventoried names overlap:

• Microsoft Corporation
• Microsoft? Corporation
• Microsoft% Corporation

In this scenario, the wildcard character in the "Microsoft% Corporation" inventoried name matches the same text strings as the first two inventoried names do. When SMS tries to update the display name mapping rule for the first inventoried name, a conflict occurs, and the error message appears.

To work around this problem, remove rules that overlap other rules.

Note When the problem that is described in this article occurs, you may find that not all display names are changed for all inventoried names. Remove the incorrect inventoried names, and then add these inventory names back to the associated display name.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article.