DOCUMENT:Q246614  01-MAR-2000  [sms]
TITLE   :SMS: Corrupted .ofr file Causes Offer Manager Not to Work
PRODUCT :Microsoft Systems Management Server
PROD/VER:winnt:2.0
OPER/SYS:
KEYWORDS:kbsms200 kbsms200bug

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The information in this article applies to:

 - Microsoft Systems Management Server version 2.0 
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SYMPTOMS
========

Offer Manager is the component that is responsible for updating instruction
files so that clients receive notification of new advertisements in the form of
instruction files in the Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder. At secondary sites, a
single corrupted .ofr file in the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder can cause
Offer Manager to ignore one or more advertisements with no indication of an
problem.

In such cases, Offer Manager indicates reception of an advertisement each time an
update is received, but does not process some or all of the advertisements.

CAUSE
=====

This problem occurs because Offer Manager builds a list of advertisements before
it actually processes them. Advertisements are individually loaded and parsed;
if a single advertisement (.ofr file) is not loaded successfully, Offer Manager
does not attempt to load any further advertisements. During subsequent
evaluation, advertisements that were not loaded are not processed.

WORKAROUND
==========

There are two ways to avoid this issue:

 - Obtain an uncorrupted version of the .ofr file from the parent site's
   Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder and place it in the
   Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box\Incoming folder. This overwrites the file in the
   Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder and processing proceeds normally.

 - Remove the corrupted .ofr file from the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder. To
   identify the corrupted .ofr file, compare the .ofr files to those at the
   parent site in the Sms\Inboxes\Offerinf.box folder. After replacing the file,
   copy the .ofr file(s) for the unevaluated advertisement(s) from the
   Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box folder to the Sms\Inboxes\Offermgr.box\Incoming
   folder to trigger an advertisement evaluation cycle. Although this allows
   other advertisements to be processed, the "bad" advertisement must be
   re-created to be processed successfully.

STATUS
======

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Systems Management Server
version 2.0.

Additional query words: prodsms

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Keywords          : kbsms200 kbsms200bug 
Technology        : kbSMSSearch kbSMS200
Version           : winnt:2.0
Issue type        : kbprb

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