Anti-virus and Autodesk Vault - When Security is too Secure

“If you hack the Vatican server, have you tampered in God's domain?”
Aaron Allston

Not that long ago, I ran into a real head scratcher with Autodesk Vault.

A user was trying to start the ADMS Console, and recieved the following error.


Error starting service 'Autodesk Data Management Job Dispatch'onmachine 'SERVERNAME'.
This service is required for execution of the server console.

Apparently the Job Dispatch Service wasn't running. No problem!  The scary part was ADMS would not open.  That meant no backup could get made.

Even worse, this also meant the command line script wouldn't run, since all it's doing is starting ADMS sans the user interface.. 

No problem though! I can just open up the Windows Services and start that bad boy up!

Start 'er up!

Instead, I was created with this, disheartening error.

Windows could not start the Autodesk Data Management Job Dispatch service on SERVERNAME.Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

 Now what? 

No ADMS, no backup.  One rightfully worried end user.

My goal, we need a backup.  A new server is ready and and able to accept a Vault upgrade, but how do we get the backup to the server, when ADMS can't be opened.

I actually did find a way to copy the filestore and database over to the new machine and reattach them to a new Vault. 

But it's crazy,... just crazy enough to work.  

I feel like I'm about to hotwire the Starship Enterprise...

But just before we pull off the covers to the reactor and try to MacGyver something, the user tries "one more thing".

They were running Kaspersky Antivirus, and played a hunch that it was causing a problem.

So they uninstalled it.  

And ADMS started to the light from heaven and the voices of angels. 

So it was an overzealous anti-virus seeing the job dispatch and marking it as something bad.  I had never seen that happen before.

Now before everyone goes out and tears out your anti-virus software, an exception to the Job Dispatch Service will likely fix this. I found this on the Kaspersky site for adding this exception here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't add the exception personally, nor can I speak for every anti-virus software out there.

But what I do hope, is that this experience I found helps someone else out there. 

When in doubt, turn off the anti-virus and give it a shot.  You never know when it's gone a bit too far!

Do you have an experience with anti-virus crossing up Vault, or any other Autodesk product? 

Throw in a comment and help a reader out!