Support

Hi, We have replied to you by e-mail (regarding the debug scan), but have not received a follow-up.

The manual scan option is described here: https://docs.softinventive.com/tni/user-manual/scanning-using-agents/manual-scan/

Hi again, We have found the possible cause for this. When you click "Edit - Users", AD is not queried at all, but the .users file is opened, queried and closed multiple times (trying to load an avatar for each user even if it's not present). I'm not sure why this causes such loads and delays on your system, because usually it happens very quickly. Anyway, we have optimized this, and this fix will be available in the next build of version 3.1.1. There will be a delay when you open "Users" the first time in this build (the program will rebuild some data), but all other times it will be almost immediate.

Please refer to our FAQ: https://docs.softinventive.com/tni/faq/general-questions/#Backup-and-restore

Good news for everyone: tniwinagent.exe in the latest TNI version 3.1.1 released on July 14 was updated so that it does not cause BSOD on affected systems (the ones that have faulty Intel storage drivers "iastor*.sys"). tniwinagent.exe version is 14.07.14.0. We have added a new command-line option /driver:X, where X is 0-3, and the explanations can be found in "Options - Storage". In short, 0 - completely disable low-level scan (same as /nodriver), 1 - skip disk drive scan on all systems, 2 - skip disk drive scan if iastor*.sys driver is detected (default option), 3 - always scan everything (unsafe, previous default). So now specifying nothing related to the driver in the command-line is the same as specifying /driver:2, i.e. default setting. Please check the new agent on the affected systems and let us know if it works well. If you have not renewed your license for version 3.1 and later, you can still use TNI 3.0.1 or even version 2 and substitute the existing tniwinagent.exe with the new tniwinagent.exe from the installation of TNI 3.1.1. P.S. We have also implemented the /? command-line switch in the latest agent.

Hi there, No, unfortunately TNI cannot retrieve user/group memberships at the moment. We tried to do this in the past, but it was very slow in large domains. However we will be looking to re-implement this in the near future.

Asynchronous engine uses an external tool that pings IP addresses in batches of 300 using the asynchronous ICMP requests, as its name states. The result is rather fast, but not always 100% reliable. Nmap engine uses external nmap.exe tool that pings IP addresses by its own logic. Pretty fast as well. Classic engine uses internal technique with creating 20 threads (by default) where each thread pings one asset at a time. It's rather slow, but more reliable, as we've found out. It's selected by default. Actually you can try them all and see which one suits you best. Please explain your second question, as I'm not sure what do you mean by full scan, and when do you get no username.

Hello, 1. The online status field is displayed in the Main view in "Group summary" and "General information" sections. But these are on-screen reports that are build at some moment from the data that is actual by that moment. There is no particular way for them to refresh on their own. The same problem would be in Table reports if you include the Online state field there. It will not be refreshed automatically until you rebuild the report. The ever-actual online status is displayed by the indicators of the "Online status" assistant that you see in the network tree next to each asset. We could try and add some hack that will force the field in the Main view to refresh automatically if you consider this important (but even then it won't work for printable reports in "Viewer & reports", or for "Table reports" (both on-screen and printable), only for the view that is on your screenshots). Please let us know. Also, do those online status indicators in the network tree work correctly for you? We've had some reports that they showed incorrect information sometimes. 2. TNI pings assets each 60 seconds, but each asset is re-pinged not earlier than X seconds pass since it was last pinged (where X = number of assets, with a minimum of 60 seconds, and maximum of 10 minutes). These parameters cannot be changed via Options. So in case of 129 assets all assets are re-pinged each 2-3 minutes. 3. Considering the above, there is no sense to specify last ping time next to the "Online status" assistant name, as it will always be "not more than 1 minute ago". However, it would be interesting to specify last ping time in the hint of the indicator for each asset specifically. P.S. Thanks for your positive feedback.

Yes, it will happen in 3.1.0 too, the agent there is the same. The problem is in bugs in the Intel driver (iastors.sys) which show themselves when the driver is being queried in a certain way for low-level hardware information. The low-level hardware scan is now disabled by default in TNI itself (when you run the online scan from the TNI console), but it's enabled by default in tniwinagent.exe. To disable this type of scan, you should add a /nodriver switch to the command line calling the agent. I would also suggest updating the drivers to the latest versions. We will update the agent to disable the low-level scan by default when in the /scripted mode.

In addition, we will be looking to add a possibility to compare any two specific snapshots without seeing individual changes for the intermediate snapshots (as it is now).

Hello, What condition are you trying to add to the IP address? For the report, this field is a string, not a number, so unfortunately it's not possible to add a condition "less than 192.168.15.254". It is possible to add something like "matches 192.168.*", but it will also include everything from subnets 16, 17, etc. However you can do that, and then sort the resulting table by IP address and then remove everything unnecessary after the export.

Removing WinPcap will disable Nmap that is packaged with TNI and allows to scan ports quicker and do other useful things (see "Options - Scanner"). However TNI can work without it as well.

Hi, This is strange because there is nothing special happening when the Users button is clicked. It does not scan AD every time. Please let us know if this is happening with the latest version (build 1570).

Try restoring the hidden file ".software" in the TNI folder from your backup (make sure to close the program first). "Exclude hidden" is just a filter which switched between "Hide hidden items" and "Show them as dimmed". So if you need to actually hide software, assign it the "hidden" tag and uncheck the "Incluing hidden" switch so that it says "Excluding hidden" and is unpressed.

Hi Hemo2, This file contains no viruses. It belongs to a third-party module and we can not change it. However, it is not used by the program and can be safely removed. Its absence does not affect TNI even if you would use the Nmap engine (only nmap.exe is used among all EXE files in the Nmap folder). It is there just for the sake of Nmap complete package. Here are the results of the antivirus scan for this file. You can see that only Symantec detects something, while all other antiviruses don't detect anything. Even then, Symantec does not say that it is a virus, but a special category of something suspicious (NetCat). I would consider it a false positive (which sometimes happens) and add an exception if possible.

Hi Hemo2, We're going to implement the changes discussed in nearby topics (caching and/or predeployment of the agent), to compensate its increased size. Because I don't think the size will decrease, considering that we plan to add a driver for more accurate hardware detection. Meanwhile you can download the latest small tniwinagent.exe, which includes the IE10 fix (from version 2.2.2.1490 released on July 3, 2013).

Hi Hemo2, As you can see from the posts above, this issue has been already fixed (in version 2.2.1 build 1462, released on June 4, 2013). So I merged the topics to avoid duplication. We really had to start looking for svcVersion parameter first, and if it's not present, then read the Version parameter (workaround for IE10). Perhaps you need to update tniwinagent.exe if you are using domain logon script. The version of this file must be larger than 13.06.04.0 (it's version is actually a date of last change in YY.MM.DD.00 format).

Well, I just thought it would be more convenient to choose where do you want to start your sync from, so we're going to add it anyway. For example, you will need to have fewer levels of nesting (skip those levels where you don't have any computers), which will make the network tree narrower, and for other reasons as well.

It is possible to create a small stub EXE file that will be run from the server and check if the user has the latest agent cached locally and runs it if he has, or copies the newest agent from the same folder to the user's computer (if he has no file or if it's outdated) and again runs it locally. Do you think this would be useful?

Try to select all software (Ctrl+A) and click this "x" button no matter what color it has.

The size of the agent has increased because it's now built with a new version of the developer environment and the compiler. The main change is that now it fully and natively supports Unicode. This may influence scan results only if you have data of another codepage in it (different from the default codepage used on the scanned machine). For example, a software item with a title in Chinese, Japanese, Russian etc. on a machine using Windows-1252 codepage (English, German, French, etc). With the old version it will come out as "?????", which is now fixed in the new version. If you don't experience anything like that, you can stay with the old version temporarily. I can absolutely understand your concern. When there is a thousand (for example) of users logging in to their computers in the morning, 700 KB become 700 MB of traffic via something that is not 100 Mbit/s. Unfortunately we cannot promise that the size of the agent will be decreased or that it will not be increased more as we add new functionality. It's possible to decrease it dramatically if we take the runtime libraries out of it (similar to the well-known Microsoft Visual Studio runtime libraries), but then it will be needed to pre-deploy them at least once to all machines running the agent. Another way we can take is to make the agent cache itself locally, check the version on the server and download itself from the server only if there is a newer version, otherwise run locally. Whole another way is on your side: put the agent somewhere closer to the client machines (local servers, etc), but then it's a mess to update it and set up additional group policies. Let us know your thoughts on this.

Hi Hemo2, Thanks for your comments. As you have already found out, it's really doing something hidden behind the scene. Obviously we would need to add some indication of the sync process. Also we're going to try to optimize the syncing to go faster in large networks. And finally, as I understand, you have several empty levels of the OU structure, and only then goes the OU with computers and other sub-OUs, right? Then we would need to add a possibility to specify which OU to sync from (to be different from the AD root).

Yes, it's possible with the latest version. However, take note that MAK (Multiple Activation Key) and KMS (Key Management Service) keys are not stored in registry and cannot be retrieved. Also, as to our knowledge, the keys for Office 2013 are not stored in the registry if you enter them after the installation. So it's only possible to retrieve the key if it was entered during an unattended install (via file).

Hi Karel, Please check if the Async and Nmap engines work fine in the latest version (2.2.3 build 1528). We've made some changes and now all dynamic IP addresses should be pinged in 1-2 minutes after the program start. Thank you.

Hello, Whether Internet Explorer is displayed in the Installed Software list (taken from "Add/Remove Programs" applet) depends on both Windows version and IE version. Instead of this unreliable system we have simply added a field "Internet Explorer version" in the "Operating system" category. You can see it in "Viewer & reports" for a single computer or build a custom table report including this field in "Table reports". Don't forget to use the search possibility to find this field in the "Available fields" column in the custom report constructor window.