Help Desk Wizard

The Help Desk Wizard (ANALYZE > Computers > Help Desk Wizard) lets you quickly find almost all collected information about a single end-user computer. The wizard will help identify client, network or backend server -related problems. The wizard is thus ideal if you work in a Service Desk role, and need to be able to quickly diagnose problems on your organization’s computers.

Step 1: Locate computer

You can locate computers by:

• User name: The user name on the client computer on which the PerformanceGuard agent is running. The search is case insensitive and uses wildcards, so entering the user name ted will match tedsmith as well as wasted_youth and SPOTTEDDUCK.
• Computer name: The computer name of the computer on which the agent is running. The search is case insensitive and uses wildcards.
• Agent Id: The ID of the PerformanceGuard agent installed on the computer.

Caution

Citrix: If you are looking for a Citrix user, select the Citrix user check box. This lets you search for Citrix users based on user name, domain, Citrix server or a combination thereof. You can also narrow down your search to a specific time interval.

When ready, click the lookup button to see a list of computers that match your search criteria.

Select the required computer/session, and then click Next.

Step 2: Agent information

The agent information page gives detailed information about the computer on which the PerformanceGuard agent is installed. The information is shown on tabs:

• About the PC: Basic information, such as computer name and login and startup time stamps.
• Hardware: Information about CPU type, processors, disk space, memory, etc.
• Software: Information about operating system, agent version, etc.
• Recent Network Usage: List of the most recently accessed applications. The applications are sorted so the one with the highest response time is at the top.
• Process List: Information about processes running on the computer, with details about CPU usage, threads, I/O, etc. Provides a good overview of which services use the most CPU and memory.
• Process Graph: Ability to view process information, with average and peak information, in a graph. The interval is lifespan of the session, but never more than the last two days.
• Usage Graph: Ability to view recent usage information, with average and peak information, in a graph.

If you want to further investigate the computer’s use of an application, select the required application on the Recent Network Usage tab, and then click Next >>.

Step 3: Compare traffic details

This step lets you compare the selected computer with different groups and applications, and view the results in a graph.

Compare with other groups

Compare the response time for the selected computer with response time experienced by users in another group: Select a computer group of which the computer is or isn’t a member, and then click the Compare groups button.

Caution

The group compare functionality is only enabled when the selected server and port is on PerformanceGuard monitored lists. See Server Lists and Port Lists.

Compare with other applications

Compare the response time with values delivered to the same computer by another application: Select the application in the list, and then click the Compare applications button.

PerformanceGuard will find all applications (server and port combinations) that the selected computer has been in contact with for the last 30 minutes.

Advanced

Use this to change the graph’s y-axis (vertical axis) range. You can also change the interval, but that’ll only affect the graph for the group comparison (which typically contains data for a longer period). Click Update to apply your changes.

Recent traffic

The graph will adjust according to the values you specify in the other sections. For example, the graph can show the response times for a computer that has communicated with a server on a specific port, compared to the communication of all computers in a network group that have communicated with the same server.

When done, click Finish.

Increased response times? Locate the problem source

Increased response time can have three different reasons:

1. Client: If the free memory is low, or the CPU utilization is high, then the bottleneck is probably the user’s own system.

2. Application (server:port): If the response time for a computer compared with other groups doesn’t vary much, then the application may be the source of the problem.

   By increasing the interval you can observe if the response time has increased during the last period of time. In order to rule out network-related problems, the members of the comparing group must be on the same network segment as the user’s computer, and optimally on the same hub or switch.

3. Network: Response times for different groups can be compared with the response time experienced by the computer. Big differences in response times for groups on different network segments may be caused by problems with the network. If the differences in response time for the computer compared with the group is large, the problem is very likely caused by the network.