NI SystemLink Forwarding Service Error 2 in Windows Event Logs

Issue Details

I have noticed nisystemlinkforwarding.exe keeps throwing Error 2 in Windows Event Viewer logs:

The description for Event ID 2 from source nisystemlinkforwarding.exe cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event: 
Error occurred when synchronizing start utilization. Error code: 404, Start Utilization Record:




This occurs periodically:

Solution

This error is reported in a client machine when the Asset Manager tool cannot reach a SystemLink Server that has been configured. To address this error:

• Verify the network connection to the SystemLink Server.
• Check that the SystemLink Services are running correctly, which can be verified in the SystemLink Server Configuration application on the server side, and that the SystemLink Client in the client is configured correctly.
• Try restart the client and verify if the connection is reestablished.
• If you are using SystemLink versions previous to 19.6, try updating SystemLink to newer versions. 
• If there are connection issues between the client and server refer to: Troubleshooting SystemLink Client Connection Issues

If you are not using SystemLink Server in your application at all, you are not connecting the affected machine to a SystemLink Server and there's no use for SystemLink asset utilization data, this error can be considered harmless as there will not be a SystemLink Server to send the asset data to. In this case:

• You can ignore the errors.
• Or uninstall the NI SystemLink Forwarding Service from NI Package Manager (NIPM). This package is only visible if you uncheck the Product only option and enable the Gear Icon>>Show full version numbers and hidden packages in the Installed tab of NIPM.
  • Doing this will also uninstall packages like the NI SystemLink Client (which would also remove the NI SystemLink Test Monitor Client plugin if installed), NI SystemLink Asset Manager Support for LabVIEW and NI SystemLink Asset Manager Utilization Support. 

Additional Information

The NI SystemLink Forwarding Service (nisystemlinkforwarding.exe) will continuously log this error as long as it has Asset Performance Management (APM) data that it tries to forward but it cannot. The forwarding service in the client is trying to publish Asset Utilization data to the server, but it is unable. This error is more of a warning, as it will retry until the APM service becomes available.

All the Asset Utilization information from all sources goes through that forwarding service. For example, even if Asset Utilization Tracking is disabled in TestStand, there could be something else on the system publishing utilization data.

This error message will continue to be reported until it manages to successfully publish all the leftover utilization data on the system. Even if the source creating the data is stopped, the previously created utilization data will still be there on the target, waiting to be synchronized with the server.