In operational practice, resolving “psmsc036e” involves several methodical steps. First, confirm whether psminitsession.exe should be running at all by reviewing the product documentation for the Pegasus suite or the specific automation tool in use. Second, check system and application event logs around the time the error was recorded; exit codes or crash dumps may pinpoint the cause. Third, manually execute the binary from a command prompt to observe any interactive errors (e.g., “missing DLL,” “access denied”). Fourth, consider environmental factors: Was the error observed after a reboot, a patch installation, or a change in group policy? Finally, if the process is indeed transient, suppress the error or adjust the monitoring schedule to avoid spurious alerts.
Older versions (5.x and earlier) had race conditions where the process would terminate before Puppet could attach to it. psmsc036e no process was found for image psminitsession.exe
: Versions prior to 6.0 used a brittle session detection mechanism. Newer versions retry the process lookup multiple times. Third, manually execute the binary from a command
You are most likely to encounter this error when: Older versions (5
The error is a common CyberArk Privileged Session Manager (PSM) issue. It typically indicates that the PSM server could not launch the required initialization process during a session attempt . Quick Fixes
The most common cause. psminitsession.exe only launches when an actual user logs on interactively (via console or RDP). If the server is headless or only accessed via WinRM/SSH, Puppet cannot find the process.