Microsoft's Premier Support Reporting Tool will save time and your sanity

Diagnosing Windows problems on your own PC can be difficult. But understanding what's happening on a friend's system, far away, is a far greater challenge. Especially if they're less than technical, and unable to answer even basic troubleshooting questions without a lot of help.

So what should you do? It's surprisingly easy: just follow Microsoft's lead. The company has developed a Premier Support Reporting Tool that makes it easy to collect a huge amount of data on just about any PC. And if you use it, too, the program will make it much easier to figure out exactly what's going on with a remote computer system.

The Reporting Tool comes in the form of a small (around 1MB) executable file, so it's easily emailed to the target PC. And there's no installation required, either: your recipient just runs the program, clicks "Yes" to the Licence agreement, then watches as the Reporting Tool collects its information. Once it's finished, an Explorer window opens at the folder containing the report, and all the recipient has to do is email you a copy. You can then expand this (it's a CAB file) to view the contents.

At first glance the sheer volume of information on offer can seem overwhelming. There's no GUI, nothing to hold your hand, explain any technical details or to help you find what you need: just a bunch of files and folders that you have to figure out for yourself. But as long as you're an experienced Windows troubleshooter, there's nothing to worry about -- just start double-clicking on the various files and you'll be amazed by how much is on offer here.

There's a full System Information file, for instance, so you'll be able to see details on your target PCs hardware, drivers, running tasks, services, drives, network settings, "problem" devices and more. You also get a complete copy of the PC's event logs, allowing you to browse them for clues to its problems. Has the system been unstable? The dbginfo folder will tell you more, and also includes recent crash dumps that you can analyse further.

There's in-depth information on the target PC's Internet Explorer and Office setups, covering everything from key settings to file versions. And you get a lengthy list of files covering just about everything else you might want to see on the system: its startup programs, user groups, scheduled tasks, HOSTS file, hard drive details, NTFS configuration, power plans, installed Windows updates, key Registry settings -- and the list goes on.

With no help at all, some of this can be baffling, and it does take a little while to locate the information you need. At first, anyway. The Premier Support Reporting Tool is still incredibly useful, though, and if you ever try to diagnose problems on remote Windows PCs then it could save you a great deal of time and effort.

Get more Windows tips like this at Software Crew.