Sophos

Online support

Product maintenance

Contact support

Support services

Enterprise Console: 'Transient error while performing the requested operation'.

Issue
When using Enterprise Console the following error is displayed:
Transient error while performing the requested operation.

Sophos product and version
Enterprise Console 3.0

Operating system
Any supported platform where Sophos Enterprise Console can be installed.

Technical Information
The error above can occur when there is a large SQL query running or if the server is busy for an extended period of time. Typically in a Sophos context this can be seen when a handful of computers have a large number of errors.


What to do

  1. Firstly, close any Enterprise Consoles that may be open, including remote consoles.
  2. Restart the Sophos Management service.
  3. Re-launch Enterprise Console.
  4. Using 'Acknowledge alerts and errors',  acknowledge any outstanding alerts from computers. It is advisable to do this on a few computers at a time in order not to cause further time-outs.

If the warning repeatedly appears, continue through this article which describes how to purge acknowledged alerts. 

1. Determine how many acknowledged alerts per computer are in the database.

  1. Open Reports in Enterprise Console.
  2. Select the following options:
    • Alerts per location.
    • Period: This year.
    • Location: Computers.
  3. Click on the Table button, the resulting table will show you how many acknowledged alerts each machine has.  If these numbers are significant it may be worth purging these.

2. Follow the steps given below for Purging alerts.
Sophos recommends that you backup the database first as follows:

    1. Open a command prompt type:
                 CD C:\Program Files\Sophos\Enterprise Console\DB\ 
    2. To backup the database, run the command
                  BackupDB.bat Sophos3Bak SOPHOS
      An alternative database instance to SOPHOS can be specified as an argument to BackupDB.bat.  BackupDB.bat /? will display the usage.

Purge the alerts:

  1. Open Enterprise Console.
  2. Go to the Tools menu and select Configure Reporting.
  3. Select the Purge tab.
  4. Change the ‘Purge alerts older than’ to a value that will purge the acknowledged alerts.
  5. You must now edit the Windows registry. Ensure that you read the warning about editing the registry first.
    • Open Regedit and navigate to the key:
      HKLM\Software\Sophos\EE\Management Tools
  6. Create a new DWORD called DBPurgeIntervalInMinutes
  7. Give it a value of 1
  8. Restart the Sophos Management Service and wait for 5 minutes. Go back to section 1 above: 'Determine how many acknowledged alerts per computer are in the database' and see if the number of errors has gone down.
  9. Once the purge has taken place, ensure the ‘Purge alerts older than’ option is set back to the previous settings. 
  10. Remove the registry entry that was created in step 6 above.
  11. Restart the Sophos Management service.

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.