SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections

SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections. This one goes back several years to when I was routinely writing code that used the ConfigMgr SDK (although in an odd coincidence, I was writing such code again yesterday). 

It was pretty easy to run some buggy code that didn’t quite do what was intended, and as a result, ConfigMgr might be left in an odd state.

Latest PostsHow To Disable SCCM Application Deployment | ConfigMgr | MEMCM – HTMD Blog #2 (howtomanagedevices.com) & Fix Report Server Cannot Open A Connection Error ConfigMgr | SCCM HTMD Blog (anoopcnair.com)

SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections

One example of this: orphaned collections.  These exist in ConfigMgr, and if you look via WMI, you can see them.  But they don’t exist in the console anywhere – they are invisible. 

Patch My PC

This would happen because those collections were not “rooted” to the top-level collection called “COLLROOT” (or any other collection, if you build collection hierarchies). SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections.

SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections
Collection – SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections

Other than “buggy code,” how else could these orphaned collections happen?  Good question, hard to say. SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections.

So how do you fix these?  Well, simple:  You “re-root” them by creating a new SMS_CollectToSubCollect WMI instance that says “this collection is a subcollection of COLLROOT.”  SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections.

A long time ago, I wrote a script to do this.  After enough digging around, I found it again, so I’ll provide it here:

Adaptiva

Set services = Getobject(“winmgmts://YOURSERVER/root/sms/site_XXX”)

‘ Just in case we need to re-root a collection, get the class instance
Set theClass = services.Get(“SMS_CollectToSubCollect”)

‘ Get a list of collections.  Make sure each one has a parent.  If not, connect it to COLLROOT.
Set collList = services.ExecQuery(“select * from SMS_Collection where CollectionID <> ‘COLLROOT’ “)
For each c in collList

‘ WScript.Echo “Checking ” & c.CollectionID

‘ See if this collection is already associated with the root collection.  If not, fix it.
Set result = services.ExecQuery(“select * from SMS_CollectToSubCollect where subCollectionID = “”” & c.CollectionID & “”””)
If result.Count = 0 Then
WScript.Echo “No parent found for ” & c.CollectionID

Set theRelationship = theClass.SpawnInstance_()
theRelationship.parentCollectionID = “COLLROOT”
theRelationship.subCollectionID = c.CollectionID
Set path = theRelationship.Put_
Set path = Nothing
Set theRelationship = Nothing

WScript.Echo “Added ” & c.CollectionID & ” (” & c.Name & “) to the root collection”

End If
Set result = Nothing

Next

Paste this into a text file, change the server name (from “YOUR SERVER”) and site code (from “XXX”), save it as “ReRoot.vbs”, and run it using “cscript.exe ReRoot.vbs”.  It will check every collection, and if it finds one that is orphaned, it will “re-root” it to to the root collection, telling you what collection (ID and name) was fixed.  After the script is finished, you can find the “re-rooted” collections in the admin console, and you can decide what to do with them from there.

Excellent script posted by Michael NiehausOrginal Post

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…

1 thought on “SCCM ConfigMgr How to Remove Orphaned collections”

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.