Failed to validate content hash on ConfigMgr Distribution Points after Content Validation

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

We have recently had problems with our global distribution points in ConfigMgr after the monthly content validation has happened. On some of our distribution points (not all) we are getting and error stating:

“Failed to validate content hash”

With our monitoring on the Distribution Point Configuration Status looking like this (click the thumbnails for the larger images):

As you can see from the Asset Message screenshot, the actual error is:

“Failed to retrieve the package list on the distribution point, or the package list in content library doesn’t match the one in WMI.”

This is what the problem was in our situation – on the distribution points that had the error, the package ID was in the WMI but it was not actually on the server as a package, so there was a mismatch.

However, ConfigMgr does not make it easy for you as it does not tell you what the package is so that you cannot find it to redistribute it – the reason for this is that there actually is no package! It is probably an old package that has been previously deleted but remains in the WMI on the Distribution Point server.

So, how do you fix it?

The solution is very simple and you can use Powershell to fix it. You will need to download our Powershell fix package from below:

SCCM Distribution Point Validation Fix

First of all, you need to identify all your Distribution Point servers that have the issue, once you have this list, you can fix them one by one. Below is instructions on what to do on one server but you should repeat this on all your servers that have the issue.

Logon to your Distribution Point server and run Powershell as an administrator. You first need to ensure that you have unrestricted execution policy set, so to do this, run the following Powershell command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

When you press enter, it will ask you to confirm, just press the “Y” key to complete this process.

Once this is complete, you can now run a Powershell script on your Distribution Point server to identify is there are any packages that are in the WMI on the server that are not actually on your Distribution Point.

The script you need to run is contained in the Powershell DP Fix pack that you downloaded earlier called:

“ContentValidationDPCheck.ps1”

When you run this, if there are any packages within the WMI that are not on the Distribution Point then it will list them for you and write them into an array for storage, then it will remove the WMI entries from the server – however it will ask you to confirm for each deletion. Below is a screenshot from one of our erroring Distribution Point servers with the list of packages in the WMI and the confirmation warnings:

Once this is complete, the next time the Content Validation is carried out on your Distribution Points, you should see that all errors have now gone.

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