The solution for this was to basically stop looking for strings at the beginning of the line in the configs. Below is the reply from SW on how to fix my specific problems:
Regarding you inquiry about your config change report, this something we can fix with the creation of one rule and the modification of another.
Navigate to settings>NCM Settings>Configs>Comparison Criteria
Create a New Rule:
Give the report a Title. Then you will give it the regex to ignore all lines that begin with an exclamation point. This can be done with a regex rule of the following:
^!
Modify Rule:
Next we will need to modify the existing hex data rule to remove the ^ from the beginning of regex rule that ignores the quit line: ^[ \t\r\n\v\f]*quit[ \t\r\n\v\f]* . After removing the ^ it should look like the following:
[ \t\r\n\v\f]*quit[ \t\r\n\v\f]*
Next Steps:
Once the steps are completed above, you will then want to download a fresh startup and running config for the selected device(s). Once that new config is stored it should update the chart accordingly.
Please let me know if this helps or if you require further assistance.
Regards,
Jeremy Ruth
SolarWinds Technical Support