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I'm running SBS 2011 with some clients connected from home-offices via vpn. My problem is that the event log of the server is polluted every 30 minutes with DCOM 10009 errors: "DCOM was unable to communicate with the computer X using any of the configured protocols".

On the web I've read a lot about fixing dns and firewall settings to restore client-server-communication, like Known post installation event errors in SBS 2008 (and how to resolve them) and Why is My Computer Status Not Showing Online in the SBS Console?

However, in my case the error event 10009 is only being generated for computers that are currently shutdown and reside on subnets in home-offices. If these clients are online, everything is working and no events are logged. Shutdown clients in the headquarter (server subnet) never generate this error.

I've found that this correlates with the computer status in the SBS console: Shutdown clients in the headquarter are listed as "Offline", whereas shutdown homeoffice-clients in different subnets are reported as "Online – Unable to query computer Information". This makes me assume it's SBS monitoring causing the failing queries, because it's not able to properly detect that these clients are offline and initiates further DCOM calls.

My question is: How is SBS detecting if a client is offline and why is this method not working for clients residing in different subnets? Any hint to get rid of the DCOM error events is highly appreciated.

Jörg Frantzen
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    Ignore it. It's not worth it. What problems is it causing you at the moment? – BlueCompute Jul 31 '14 at 12:40
  • It's driving me nuts :) And spamming the event log. I just want to make sure there's nothing wrong they way I integrated the homeoffice-clients (i.e. routing). – Jörg Frantzen Jul 31 '14 at 17:53
  • If the workstations are on remote subnets then you'll only get proper status when they are VPNed in, no? How are these clients joined to SBS network and 'integrated'? – BlueCompute Jul 31 '14 at 21:55
  • All clients have been installed and joined the domain in the headquarter. Some of them have then been taken into homeoffices. The VPNs are router to router hardware VPNs. – Jörg Frantzen Aug 01 '14 at 13:59
  • Clients in the hq-subnet that are physically disconnected from the network are properly detected as offline and don't generate the DCOM error. However shutdown homeoffice-clients generate this error, regardless of being connected to the network. The second link I posted hints at SBS using ARP to analyze client-status in the same subnet and ping for client-status in different subnets. But why doesn't SBS stop after a failed ping and goes on make DCOM-calls? I will give up on the matter if somebody can confirm this to be the default behaviour and it happens with every SBS-Installation. – Jörg Frantzen Aug 01 '14 at 14:17
  • I work as a consultant, and I can say for certain that the level of acceptable errors in the event logs is about 10 times the amount allotted to a Server 2008R2. I am going to have to agree with BlueCompute on this one, to just ignore it. SBS tried to do everything for you, but seems to not really do any of it well. I would honestly try to migrate away from it when you can. – Philosophene Aug 27 '14 at 00:00
  • Thanks for your feedback. Since there will be no more future releases of SBS, I guess I'll be sitting on SBS 2011 for a while. Would be nice to have at least a properly running system. – Jörg Frantzen Aug 28 '14 at 06:47

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