By Richard Lane
Help! Windows Vista crashed. This TechNet Virtual Lab on Windows Vista Built-in Diagnostics shows how Vista’s Reliability and Performance Monitor can help to uncover the source of the problem, showing failure information and software installation history at a glance. A Virtual Lab gives you actual hands-on experience but over a remote connection.
This concise, introductory exercise only takes a few minutes to run through, but could save hours of frustration. A key point is that another Vista feature, Remote Assistance, means that technicians can often accomplish what is needed from their own desks.
If you are like me, you hate having to complete lengthy forms and registration procedures just to view some web content. This is great: one simple form and you are in.
I took a short break while TechNet built the lab. Behind the scenes a new virtual machine is being prepared, since I will be working with a real Vista installation.
While I was waiting, I downloaded the lab's manual and took a quick read through.
TIP: While the manual is open, save it to your hard drive. The steps will be useful in future troubleshooting.
I hit Start Your Lab to open the Virtual Labs console, a separate browser window which contains the virtual machine and the exercises.
On the left of the console is the Virtual Machine. It is very smooth and works just like a local installation of Vista, except a little more slowly.
Over on the righthand side are the instructions for completing the exercise. This lab has only one exercise – I said it would not take long to complete!
The first task is to run a batch file to set up the lab. It is not really part of the diagnostics, but it got me familiar with working in the virtual machine.
The lab got me to use Vista’s instant search to find and run the Reliability Monitor. I liked that, as search is one of Vista’s best features.
Next, the Reliability Monitor starts, and the exercise guided me through clicking on the various incident types, including warnings, information, and crash reports. I had not previously realized that all this information is so close at hand on every Vista desktop.
The final step is to check the detail for each incident and to use common sense to work out what has most likely gone wrong and how to fix it. In this case, you luckily don’t need to look up any of those hex codes under Failure Detail; otherwise it would be a much longer lab!
There wasn’t a lot of deep technical detail in this lab, but in a way, that is the point. A few minutes glancing at this diagnostic tool, perhaps from the comfort of a remote connection, is often all it takes to get a user up-and-running with a reliable machine again.
TechNet Virtual Lab Express: Windows Vista Built-in Diagnostics.