Windows toolkit Literacy: MPS reports

Microsoft provided multiple tools along with the software when Windows 2000 was launched 10 years ago, including two tool kits for diagnosis and troubleshooting: Windows support tool kits and Windows resource kits.

These tools have evolved over the years. The Windows Support toolkit is stored in the \ Support directory of the Windows 2000 and 2003 installation discs, and the resource toolkit needs to be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Most of the commonly used tools come from the Support toolkit, while the resource toolkit is more professional. These tools are constantly updated over time. For example, if the new Windows support tool is updated with Windows Server 2003 sp2, repadmin.exe adds more parameters.

After a while, some tools will be directly integrated into the Windows operating system. For example, gpresult.exe is used to display the application results of group policies on the Server and client) and is integrated into Windows Server 2003. In the Windows 2000 era, we must copy it from the support toolkit to the client for use, which is too inconvenient.

MPS reports supported by Microsoft products

Many years ago, Microsoft released Microsoft Product Support MPS to report a set of support tools and command scripts for system diagnosis to improve the system diagnosis capability. For example, there is a set of MPS reports designed for the Active Directory to collect event logs from the domain controller and run tools such as Dcdiag, Netdiag, Gpresult, Repadmin, and Gpotool. Other versions of MPS reports, including network, Exchange, and SQL Server. This tool has evolved into a single download version, but it provides a series of options during runtime:

• You can run this tool locally or on other computers.
• Figure 1)

Figure 1. MPS report tool interface

It then collects diagnostic data and provides a set of reports. The menu shown in Figure 1 also has an "get more information" option, which lists all diagnostic options to be run. Please note that the diagnosis for the Active Directory is placed in the Server Components Server component) option. These reports are the results set for separate running of various support tools. It has many advantages:

• It is a single tool that we can use to obtain data without having to run the 10-12 programs separately. Especially in the Active Directory environment, this is really convenient when you need to run these programs in multiple domain controllers.
• All data is stored in a CAB file.
• You can save the event log in the format of .evtx).txtand .csv. I will use the. txt and. CSV formats. Note:

Figure 2: Event ID list in Excel

Both X86 and X64 platforms have their corresponding MPS report versions available for download. This is great, but I still have some dissatisfaction:

1. Several prerequisites must be met before MPS reports are used:

• Microsoft. NET Framework 2.0
• Powershell 1.0
• Windows Installer 3.1
• Microsoft Core XML service MSXML) 6.0

This is inconvenient. However, I can run it successfully on a Windows Vista SP2 laptop without the above components installed.

2. There should be more self-help methods. I do not like to choose the menu method. By the way, there is no special Active Directory Component in the menu ). I still like the previous method: Download the specified EXE file and run it directly.

3. I prefer the previous method to create a cab file that contains multiple txt files. Now, you need to click it multiple times to get what you want.

4. Poor performance. I download and run the. exe file, select the current computer, and then General) option. It took about 45 minutes to run on my laptop with 2 processors and 4 GB memory installed with Windows Vista and took up a lot of disk space.

Prepare your own report tools

You can also create your own MPS report. I have a colleague named Joe Turton who compiled a tool for internal use within the company. We call it a HPS Report, which is much better in terms of functionality and running speed than MPS reports, in addition to Windows Management specifications WMI, its runtime environment does not require any required components. In addition, every time I want to add some content, I only need to send an email, so Joe can implement it. Here, I don't want to promote and sell the HPS report as a product. I just want to say that a talented developer can make the same products as Microsoft, you can also customize your MPS report as needed.