The Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Inventory process cannot return information about programs that appear on the list in Add/Remove Programs on a Systems Management Server client computer.

This problem occurs when inventoried values are not available under the registry key on the Systems Management Server client computer.

When products are registered in Add/Remove Programs, each product can write many properties and values (such as the display name and the publisher) in the registry. The product must register at least the ProductID (the name of the registry key).

For the Inventory process to inventory a product, the product's registry key must have at least one value under it that Systems Management Server requests to be returned. The registry provider only reports instances that have one or more matching values keys. The value can be empty, but at least one matching value key must exist.

By default, the values that Systems Management Server inventories (as defined in the Sms_def.mof file) are the following:

• DisplayName
• InstallDate
• Publisher
• DisplayVersion

If none of these values exist under a product that is registered in Add/Remove Programs, Systems Management Server does not inventory the product.

Typical applications (including many Microsoft applications) write significantly more data than just the ProductID when they register in Add/Remove Programs. However, other applications might register only the ProductID.

To verify whether this problem will occur, review the registry of representative client computers. To verify the registry information, view the data that appears in the registry under the following key: The Inventory process will not return registry entries that do not specify at least one of following values:

• DisplayName
• InstallDate
• Publisher
• DisplayVersion

To view these values, you can run the wbemtest command at a command prompt on the client computer, and then enumerate the instances of the Win32Reg_AddRemovePrograms class.