Fixing the 0x1 error with the Forefront Definition Update Tool?

OK, I will reveal one of my own skeletons today.  I have setup the FEP definition update tool several times for customers but in my own lab I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why it would not run correctly.  For those that don’t know, this is a tool run via task scheduler to automate the deployment of FEP definitions via ConfigMgr with out on-going admin interaction.  No matter what I did, it just would not run and I would get an error of 1 back.  Finally, with the help of my fellow PFE, Richard Balsley, I figured out that this was due to my use of System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) on my test bench, and a bug in the interaction between the two tools.

Just recently this bug was fixed and a new version of the tool was placed on the website.  There were some other updates to the tool as well which Jason Lewis has nicely documented in a blog post as well. If you have Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 and aren’t using the tool yet I highly recommend you read the blog post and get it set up.

Part 2

On a separate, but related note, I had another cause for the 0x1 error with one of my customers with a not-so-obvious cause.  We had copied the command line options from the published technet article, which turned out to be the problem.  In that article the quotes around the article ID are actually smart quotes and will not interpret correctly from the command line or task scheduler.  If you replace the quotes with normal ones it should work.  I believe the article is going to be corrected so hopefully by the time you read this it will no longer be an issue.