BigFix 11: Clients failing to register to Relay - Winsock errors 4294967288 and 4294967286 (Network tests successful)

Usage and Config Platform
1

Hi everyone,

I'm currently troubleshooting an issue where a few specific BigFix clients (v11.0.3.82) are failing to report and register to their assigned relay. Interestingly, other clients are reporting to this exact same relay without any issues.

When checking the affected client logs, we are seeing the following sequence of errors during secure registration:

At 21:34:09 +0800 -
RegisterOnce: Attempting secure registration with 'https://<Relay_IP>:52311/cgi-bin/bfenterprise/clientregister.exe?RequestType=RegisterMe&ClientVersion=11.0.3.82...
At 21:34:52 +0800 -
RegisterOnce: GetURL failed - General transport failure. - SOCKET CONNECT (winsock error 4294967288 - registration url - http://<Relay_IP>:52311/cgi-bin/bfenterprise/clientregister.exe?...
At 21:36:53 +0800 -
RegisterOnce: Attempting secure registration with 'https://<Relay_FQDN>:52311/cgi-bin/bfenterprise/clientregister.exe?...
At 21:37:38 +0800 -
RegisterOnce: Relay does not support secure registration.
RegisterOnce: Registration backing off from SSL, attempting in clear text
At 21:38:24 +0800 -
RegisterOnce: GetURL failed - General transport failure. - SOCKET RECEIVE (winsock error 4294967286 - registration url - http://<Relay_FQDN>:52311/cgi-bin/bfenterprise/clientregister.exe?...

Here is what we have tested and confirmed so far:

  • Basic Connectivity: Ping, Telnet on port 52311, and Test-NetConnection from the affected clients to the relay all succeed perfectly. Port 52311 is definitely open.

  • Hosts File: We checked the local hosts file on the clients, and there are no incorrect static IP mappings.

  • Workaround Success: If we bypass the relay and point these specific affected clients directly to the Root Server, they register and report perfectly.

Next Steps Planned: Based on some older forum threads, we are planning to try a full "Client Reset" on one of the machines (stopping the service, deleting ComputerID, RegCount, and ReportSequenceNumber from the registry, and clearing the __BESData folder). If that fails, we might try completely reinstalling the BigFix Relay software, as we've read that the relay state can sometimes get corrupted and reject specific clients.

Has anyone encountered these specific Winsock errors (4294967288 / 4294967286) when standard network connectivity tests show everything is fine? Could this be related to MTU sizes, deep packet inspection (DPI) on the network, or something else entirely?

Any insights or alternative solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

2

We are on version 11.0.3 and faced similar issue even though telnet was working fine. Issue was caused by zscaler.

Since you have already mentioned all of the recommended items. You can do a test to see if full size packet can make it from client to relay

ping <Relay_IP> -f -l 1472

Handshake must be happening but somewhere connection resets by a peer or receive timeouts occurring after the initial TCP handshake has completed.

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3

Same log messages here, Zscaler was the issue, they permites BigFix traffic and that's was it.

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