Gutcheck

Author(s)

• MERLIN

Tags

Windows Diagnostics Performance Support Troubleshooting Helpdesk Hardware Reporting

Functions

Invoke-Gutcheck

PSEditions

Desktop Core

Dependencies

This module has no dependencies.

Release Notes

0.12.1 - The whole Run in cards.
- The search for a newer version and the sign-in for the Check Definitions are cards
 too, under the banner. The QR code stands in its card and is gone once signed in.
- A card is as wide as the window, so that what a Check found can be read, and two
 thirds of its height at most.
- A Run of many Checks no longer flickers, and no progress bar of PowerShell's flashes
 over it. The result has a bar while the Report is written.
- A Run prints nothing after the path to its Report. -PassThru hands back the Run.
- The banner is a small face where the window can draw it, and it blinks.
0.12.0 - A Run you can watch.
- In PowerShell 7 a Run shows what it examines, the Checks and the result as three cards.
 Each Check is a row with its progress and the worst of what it found; a finished part
 folds to one line, and the result stays open with every FAIL and WARN.
- The applications are chosen from a list to move in, with everything detected selected.
 A name that is on no list can be typed and is checked as a process.
- On Windows PowerShell 5.1 a Run writes what it always wrote, a line for every Finding.
 Its questions are asked as a numbered list and a typed line.
- The questions about another user's session are a choice of three and a yes or no,
 where they were letters to type.
- console.log has every line as one line where the window has colour.
0.11.3 - What a terminal server showed.

- On Windows Server 2019 every HTTPS endpoint failed with an error about
 "SslProtocolType": that was Gutcheck's way of asking and no fault of the server asked.
 It is asked again naming TLS 1.2.
- Each User Profile gets its share of the measuring time, three minutes in all: on a
 server with 32 profiles one had been measured.
- A Windows Server is said to keep no list of antivirus programs and to record no boot
 duration, where the Report said "nicht verfuegbar".
- A path handed in single quotes ends at its quote, and an error number Windows has no
 sentence for is said to have none.

0.11.2 - Evidence a second level can read.

- Every table of the evidence sorts by any column and filters by a word, and has a help
 behind a "?" that says what it shows, where it comes from and how to read it.
- The adapters' power saving and SMB client, the proxy and the wireless interface are
 tables that say what each value does, where they were lines as they came.
- A process that hosts services names the services in it, in its Finding and in a table.
- The part with admin rights runs without a window of its own; the Run's window says
 which Check it is at. -ShowElevatedWindow shows it as before.
- An Outlook profile with a mailbox on the own Exchange and one in Exchange Online has
 the sign-in looked at for both.

0.11.1 - Whose it is, and where to read on.

- For Outlook, the Servers of the mailboxes that are set up are measured: the
 Customer's own Exchange for a mailbox that is on it, Microsoft 365 for one in Exchange
 Online. Each measurement says whose Server it is.
- Sign-in errors at Microsoft 365 are told apart by program: Outlook and Office in one
 Finding, OneDrive, Teams, the browser and the others in a Finding of their own.
- A Finding that a text names by its title is a link to it.
- Where the log holds no Group Policy run at startup or at sign-in, the Report says why.

0.11 - The User, and what changed.

- The Report says who the User is in terms of the machine, under a new heading
 "Benutzer": since when they are signed in and what their Session holds; what kind of
 User Profile they have, how large its folders are and how long it takes to load;
 where Desktop and Documents lie; their proxy, default printer, autostart, monitors
 and Offline Files.
- Every Session and every User Profile on the machine is listed, with a warning for a
 disconnected Session that holds memory and a count of User Profiles nobody has used
 for half a year. Of other Users only account, state, times, memory, kind and size.
- A timeline of what Windows logged as changed in the last 30 days - programs, updates,
 drivers, services, restarts - with the account. A crash Finding says so where the
 crashes began shortly after such a Change.
- Gutcheck reads state and logged Changes and never what a User did: no file names, no
 usage, no content.
- A Run that is not in the User's Session says so and leaves the User's part unread.

0.10 - Every running program.

- A new Check looks at every running program, not only at the applications that have a
 Check of their own: a table of all of them with memory, handles, GDI and USER objects,
 and a Finding for one near the limit of 10,000 GDI or USER objects or holding
 unusually many handles. The programs of other accounts are read with admin rights;
 what stays unread is said to be unread.
- A status of Windows or a WinHTTP error Gutcheck has no wording for is said as Windows
 says it; each print service error has its own meaning; four sign-in errors of
 Microsoft Entra ID are worded as Microsoft documents them.
- Where a program was found is one Finding per application, and a shortcut to a program
 on a share is information, not a warning.

0.9.1 - No code without what it means.

- A status or an error code is no longer shown bare: service exit codes, print and Group
 Policy errors, HTTP statuses, certificate errors, sign-in errors of Windows and of
 Microsoft Entra ID, add-in settings and the antivirus and printer states say what they
 mean, with the code behind it. The evidence tables are headed in German.
- The Report says who ran the Run and with what rights, and gives the evidence more room.
- Fewer false alarms: a remote desktop session's display adapter is no outdated graphics
 driver; a printer whose queues report offline is one printer and is not called
 outdated; a virtual disk is not failed for calling itself an HDD; the add-ins Office
 installs itself do not count as many add-ins.
- Failed connections that are a program going through the network address by address
 are recognised as that, and the Report says what to look for.
- An elevated window of an account that has no lesser rights is not offered a restart.

0.9 - What the Findings point to together.

- "Verdacht": where two Findings observed two different things that point to one cause,
 the Report says so before anything else - a failing drive, failing memory, the graphics
 driver, this machine's network connection, or one Server. It names the Findings it
 rests on, says once what to do, and says what would have supported it and was not
 checked. It is no Finding and is in no count.
- A Finding says what it means ("Bedeutung") apart from what to do about it ("Was tun"),
 for the Findings of Stability, Network and Outlook that can warn or fail.
- What a Hint assumes about the machine is found out once and stated at the top of the
 Report: connected by cable, Wi-Fi or VPN, notebook or desktop, docked, on battery, in a
 domain. No docking station is named on a desktop, and a slow measurement says when it
 was taken on battery.
- A Finding links to the evidence to read with it and to the Findings that belong with
 it, and every piece of evidence says which Findings it belongs to.
- findings.csv has new columns at the end: References, Signals, Meaning, Subject,
 Unobserved. The graphics driver and its date are a Finding of their own.

0.8.3 - Hints that fit the machine, and a Run in the right session.

- A Run started "as administrator" says so before it examines anything and asks whether
 to start again in the logged-on user's session, where it asks for the rights itself.
 Started in another account it would read the wrong profile; in the user's own it would
 not see the user's network drives. -NoUserSwitch keeps a Run where it was started.
- What to do about a lossy ping or a slow Server follows how the machine reaches it: by
 cable, Wi-Fi or VPN, inside its own network or beyond. A machine at a cable is no
 longer told to try a cable. One lost ping is a WARN and not a FAIL.
- Blue screens and live kernel events say what the code means and what to do about it,
 where "2: 0x193 x2" said neither.
- Scheduled tasks that are not Windows' own are listed with account, trigger, last run
 and how it ended. A program a task starts from a share says so and points there.
- An ODBC data source is named with whose driver it uses, which is as near to the
 program as a data source gets.
- Every Finding in the Report has a button that copies it as text, for a ticket.
- The Report says "Notiz" where it said "Was tun".

0.8.2 - A stress test that loads the machine.

- The stress test could not load a processor fully: its load was PowerShell loops, which
 reach about three quarters of a healthy machine, and the Report then said that
 something was limiting the CPU. The load is compiled threads now and reaches 100 %.
 "Lasttest: Durchsatz" is on another scale; numbers from earlier Reports do not compare.
- A Server that lost its connection or could not be reached is named by name and by
 address, and the evidence sets apart which of the two the machine asked for.
- An example in a code comment no longer uses a name from a real machine.

Versions 0.1 to 0.8.1: https://github.com/kort3x/gutcheck/blob/main/docs/release-notes-earlier.md