Discovery data records (DDRs) remain queued in the ddm.box on a Systems Management Server 2003 site server

You may experience the following symptoms on a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 site server:

• The SMS database is not updated with newly created objects after a discovery interval has passed.
• Discovery data records (DDRs) remain queued in the ddm.box inbox folder. By default, the ddm.box folder is located in one of following locations:
  • C:\SMS\inboxes\
  • C:\SMS\inboxes\auth\

Additionally, the ddm.log file that is located in the \SMS\Logs folder may contain error messages that resemble the following:

This issue typically occurs when the DDR contains a corrupted SMS unique identifier.

To resolve this issue, you must remove the corrupted DDR from the ddm.box on the SMS site server. To do this, use one of the following methods.

Manually remove the corrupted DDR record

1. Use an account that has administrative credentials to log on to the SMS site server.
2. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
3. In the Services MMC snap-in, right-click SMS_Site_Component_Manager, and then click Stop.
4. Click Start, point to All Programs, click Systems Management Server, and then click SMS Administrator Console.
5. Expand Site Database (SiteCode-SiteName), and then expand Tools.
6. Right-click SMS Service Manager, point to All Tasks, and then click Start SMS Service Manager.
7. In SMS Service Manager, expand SiteCode, and then expand Components.
8. Click SMS_DISCOVERY_DATA_MANAGER.
9. In the right-pane, right-click SMS_DISCOVERY_DATA_MANAGER, and then click Query.
10. After the query is complete, right-click SMS_DISCOVERY_DATA_MANAGER, and then click Stop.
11. Locate the sms\inboxes\ddm.box folder or the sms\inboxes\auth\ddm.box folder that contains the corrupted DDR file by using Windows Explorer, and then delete the DDR file.
12. Right-click SMS_DISCOVERY_DATA_MANAGER, and then click Start.
13. In the Services MMC snap-in, right-click SMS_Site_Component_Manager, and then click Start.

Use SQL Query Analyzer to locate the corrupted DDR record

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server, and then click Query Analyzer.
2. In the Connect to SQL Server dialog box, specify the instance of SQL Server to which you want to connect, specify the type of authentication that you want to use, and then click OK.
3. In SQL Query Analyzer, select the SMS database from the list of databases.
4. To obtain a list of computers that are creating corrupted DDR files, copy and paste the following query in the Editor pane of SQL Query Analyzer, and then click Execute Query:
   
   select sys.Netbios_Name0 from System_DISC sys join MachineIdGroupXRef xref on sys.ItemKey=xref.MachineID where IsNULL(SMS_Unique_Identifier0,'') != IsNULL(GUID,'')

Note If the SMS clients continue to send corrupted DDR files, the SMS clients may be adding incompatible information to the DDR file. For example, these SMS clients may use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) tables that are incompatible with tables in the SMS database. To resolve this issue, remove the SMS agent from the affected client computer, and then reinstall the SMS agent on the client computer. For more information about how to remove an SMS 2003 client, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: