Windows Win Apps Plug-in - Technical Reference

Introduction

The Geneos Windows Win Apps plug-in monitors Windows applications. An application is defined as any program or task that shows up in the Applications tab of the Windows Task Manager.

View

The Win Apps plug-in produces a single view as follows:

windows-apps2

Headline legend

Name	Description
applicationCount	Number of applications running.
notRespondingCount	Number of applications that are not responding.

Table legend

Name	Description
Task	Name of the Windows Application, or the windows caption text.
Status	The current state of the application, either 'Running' or 'Not Responding'.
processID	The Process ID of the application.
exePath	The full path of executable that launched the window.

Plug-in configuration

Sample configuration:

hungTimeout: 250
maxWindowsNameLength: 20

The following parameters can be configured for this plug-in:

hungTimeout

The amount of time in milliseconds the plugin allows, to determine if the application has hung. The maximum limit is 250.

Mandatory: No

Default: 1

maxWindowNameLength

Limits the number of characters of the application name displayed in the Task column to the number specified.

Mandatory: No

debug

If the probe is running as a service and you need to more verbose output on what it is doing set debug to SERVICE. Else if it is running from the command-line you can set debug to 'CONSOLE'.

Mandatory: No

Using the Win Apps plug-in on Windows 2003 or 2008 Server

If you are running this Netprobe on Windows 2003 or 2008 Server, there are a couple of things that you need to be aware of:

If the Netprobe is being run as a service, you need to allow the service to interact with the desktop in order for this plug-in to be able to gather data. You can do this using the following steps:

(a) From the Start menu, select Administrative Tools - Services. Dependant on your setup, Windows may ask for your permission to continue before starting the Services tool.

(b) Right click on the Netprobe service and select "Properties" from the context menu.

(c) Tick "Allow service to interact with desktop" on the Log On tab and then press OK.

(d) Right click on the Netprobe service again and select "Restart" from the context menu.
If you are running your Netprobe on a Windows 2003 Server which is configured to run as a terminal server, just be aware that the WIN-APPS plug-in will be monitoring applications running on the console of the Server. This can potentially be a little confusing if you are also running a Remote Desktop session connected to the Server. Because of the way that a Windows 2003 Server (when running as a terminal server) implements multiple Remote Desktop sessions, you need to remember that the applications which are running in your Remote Desktop session are independent of the applications which are running on the Server console. It is the data for the applications running on the Server console, rather than for the applications running in any Remote Desktop session, that gets displayed. You will not encounter this issue at all with Windows 2008 Server.