You cannot start the GPOADmin service or Dashboard service, this may be occurring during the upgrade to 5.13.5 or later during the "Starting Services" task.
In the System event log, you have an LSASrv warning with the following detail text:
The program GPOADmin.Service.exe, with the assigned process ID <#>, could not authenticate locally by using the target name GPOADmin/GPOADminService/<FQDN>. The target name used is not valid. A target name should refer to one of the local computer names, for example, the DNS host name.
Try a different target name.
This may happen in scenarios where there are multiple GPOADmin installations on separate servers in the same forest/domain, using the same or different service accounts for each.
The following steps should be run during installation when encountering this issue, as changes, including the new registry key will be rolled back if you cancel.
Leave the installer at the "Failed to start Services" screen and do not hit "Retry" until this is complete.
1. Go to services.msc and stop all the GPOADmin services that may have started.
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Quest\GPOADmin\ServerConfig and set the registry value UseServerAndPortSPN to 1.
NOTE: If your environment is not configured to use Kerberos, GPOADmin will authenticate using NTLM.
3. On each GPOADmin service host and client, browse to the UseServerAndPortSPN in the Default.Client.Connection.config file in the Connections subdirectory of the install directory, and set the configuration value to true.
This value is near the bottom of the document.
4. Start all GPOADmin services from the services list, start the GPOADmin service before starting the Dashboard service.
The SPN format will change to GPOADmin/SERVICE_HOST_FQDN:PORT allowing for a separate service account per service host.
This can take a few minutes in very large Active Directory environments, before the SPN updates properly.
Once all three services are in the "Running" State, return to the GPOADmin installer.
The installer may complete on it's own, or you may need to hit "Retry" before it completes, depending on which state it was left in.
© 2025 Quest Software Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Terms of Use Privacy Cookie Preference Center