Vista System Reliability Monitor

Exam 70-625 TS: Connected Home Integrator

At last, a Vista exam title that you can get out of your mouth out loud without having to stop halfway through to draw breath! That said, this Technology Specialist exam is not without some interesting twists and turns, and includes coverage of Windows Home Server as well as numerous aspects of Windows Vista. Candidates typically come from the ranks of retail support operations who can recommend, implement, and (most important) troubleshoot connected solutions based on Windows Vista. Some experience in installing Vista, managing Vista security, and troubleshooting Vista networking issues is also required, with a minimum of six to twelve months in harness as a retail support technician.

The only preparation tools available for this exam come from a handful of e-learning offerings:

• Collection 7038: Microsoft Consumer Technology Solutions Sales and Technical Training
• Course 7040: Designing and Building a Consumer Technology Network
• Course 7041: Setting up Windows Vista for a Consumer Technology Solution
• Course 7043: Configuring and Troubleshooting Networking in a Consumer Technology Solution
• Course 7044: Setting Up Windows Home Server for a Consumer Technology Solution

To follow one list with another, here’s a rundown on the skills measured table from the Exam Page:

• Installing or upgrading Windows Vista:
  prepare a system for clean install or upgrade, deploy Vista from upgrade or clean install, perform post-install tasks, and troubleshoot deployment issues.
• Configuring connected solutions:
  Configure Windows Media Connect and Media Sharing, Configure MS Xbox 360 and Media Center Extender v1 for Media Sharing, and Configure Media Center Extender v2.
• Managing and maintaining Windows Vista systems:
  Configure an troubleshoot security for IE7, troubleshoot Windows Firewall and Defender issues, apply software updates, set up user accounts and parental controls, and troubleshoot issues using Reliability and Performance Monitor.
• Configuring Windows Home Server (WHS):
  Set up WHS, add users and media to WHS, set up PC backup within a WHS network, restore PCs within a WHS network, and troubleshoot issues with WHS or networking.

It’s interesting to note that the total count for those who’ve taken this exam and earned the TS: Windows Home Integrator credential stands at a relatively miniscule 235 as of 10/27/2008. The exam went live in August, so that shows less than 100 people passing this test per month, on average. Interesting exam but perhaps not as commercially viable a focus as Microsoft might like it to be? Only time will tell, and it will be equally interesting to see if the run rate climbs, holds steady, or falls in the months ahead. I’m not sure if there are enough people working at the intersection of Windows Vista and Windows Media technologies to make this credential truly popular, but we’ll be finding out!

Generate a Vista System Health Report

I recently stumbled across a hitherto unknown gem inside Windows Vista–to me, anyway. It’s called a “System Health Report” and it provides a pretty comprehensive view of a Vista system’s state, status, and current behavior. To my surprise it comes from the same facilities that support the System Reliability Monitor (see my blog “My Love-Hate Relationship with System Reliability Monitor” for my take on this built-in Vista facility) and generates a report on all major components and subsystems on the Vista PC it targets.

Here’s how to launch this facility:

• Click Start, type Performance into the Vista search box, then select Performance Information and Tools.
• Click Advanced Tools in the left panel.
• Click Generate a system health report.

At first, you’ll see a display that lets you know the program is gathering data

Once the data-gathering phase is complete, you’ll see an overview report appear instead. It offers details in a number of areas, including Diagnostic Results, Software and Hardware Configuration, and details for CPU, Network, Disk, and Memory, as well as Report Statistics. The overview report looks pretty innocuous, but you can click the arrow to the right that’s associated with any item on the left to start digging into the details.

Here, you can see the various warnings that my Vista machine collected as I ran this report. These reflect my having turned User Account Control (UAC) off on this machine, and the interesting failure of Spyware Doctor with Antivirus to register either of those components–antivirus and antispyware, that is–with the Microsoft Security Center on this machine. In this case the former is a deliberate choice, and the latter a known issue (though Spyware Doctor maintains updated signatures and software as it’s supposed to, so there’s no real cause for concern here).

If you manage a large number of Vista desktops, you may be interested to learn that this facility dovetails with products that include System Management Server or System Center Essentials to enable daily health reports to be e-mailed from each machine to a mailbox for subsequent analysis and review.

For some more good information on working with this facility in Vista, see “Scenario 6: View a diagnosis report” in the Windows Vista Performance and Reliability Monitoring Step-by-Step Guide on TechNet.