Administration Guide

Tasks and services Troubleshooting

Common issues with task queues, Audit Services, and remote agent tasks, with where to check and what to do next.

Symptom: Active tasks queue persistently long

Likely cause: An Audit Service host is overloaded or has gone offline; tasks pile up in Pending waiting for capacity.

Where to verify:

  • Admin Center > Tasks and services > Active tasks — count of Pending rows.
  • Admin Center > Tasks and services > Audit services — look for services in Inactive or Outdated state, or with a stale Last active timestamp.

Resolution:

  1. If an Audit Service has gone Inactive, restart it on its host or investigate why it stopped sending heartbeats.
  2. If a single Audit Service is consistently overloaded, stagger Site schedules so big audit runs do not stack on the same minute.
  3. If load is persistent and not bursty, install a second Audit Service on the Site so the queue has more capacity to drain into.

Symptom: Dashboard widgets slow to refresh

Likely cause: Concurrent scan or audit work saturating the Audit Service host that backs the Site.

Where to verify: Admin Center > Tasks and services > Active tasks. A long queue is the usual correlate.

Resolution: Wait for the queue to drain; stagger schedules; add a second Audit Service host if the load is persistent. See How to monitor active tasks.

Symptom: a single task is stuck in In Progress for hours

Likely cause: The target is unreachable, the credentials are wrong, or a script (custom audit field or custom tool) is hung on the target.

Where to verify:

  • The task's row in Active tasks for Device / Resource — open that target separately and confirm reachability.
  • The Audit log for any partial output the task may have produced.

Resolution:

  1. Cancel the stuck task. See How to cancel a task.
  2. Re-trigger the work after fixing the underlying issue (network reachability, credential rotation, script error).

Symptom: Audit Service modal title shows - outdated

Likely cause: The Audit Service binary version lags the instance version past the threshold that flags it as outdated.

Where to verify: Admin Center > Tasks and services > Audit services > (service) — open the detail modal.

Resolution: Update the Audit Service binary on its Windows host. An outdated service continues to run; the status is a prompt to upgrade, not a hard failure.

Symptom: scheduled audit did not run

Likely cause: Either the schedule is not assigned to the device, the device is offline, or the Audit Service that owns the device has gone Inactive.

Where to verify:

  • The device's Audit tab — confirm the schedule is assigned (UNASSIGNED means no schedule).
  • Admin Center > Tasks and services > Audit services — confirm the service is Active.
  • Admin Center > Settings > Audit schedules — confirm the schedule's Next execution is reasonable.

Resolution: Re-assign the schedule if missing, restart the Audit Service if inactive, or trigger an ad-hoc audit to verify the device is reachable.

Symptom: Remote restart shows OutcomeUnknown

AlloyScan has not confirmed a new operating system boot. This does not prove that the computer failed to restart.

Check the agent's Remote tasks history or Admin Center > Logs > Remote tasks, and confirm that the agent can communicate with AlloyScan before considering another request. A later boot confirmation can resolve the outcome to Succeeded. See How to restart a computer through an Audit Agent.

Symptom: Agent removal was canceled, but the agent still uninstalled

Canceling removal stops future removal instructions; an instruction already delivered to the agent cannot be recalled. An independent automatic-removal deadline can also remain in effect.

Review the agent's General tab for the removal warning and Remote tasks for its task history. See Audit Agents Reference.