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Introducing The XenTools Diagnostic Tool (AKA XenTools Bugtool)

In recent years there have been a few cases where XenTools upgrades may have failed or resulted in a looping situation that prevented tools from successfully installing.

Troubleshooting these issues can take hours, days, or even weeks depending on the situation.

But there’s good news! Support has developed the XenTools Diagnostic Tool (XDT) which is phase one of a two phase plan to decrease time to resolve XenTools or other Windows guest issues. In the past, support used a tool–Microsoft Product Support Report (MPSReport)–which collected key data (Event Logs, MSInfo,etc) and aided investigation of windows guest issues but Microsoft discontinued distribution of this tool in October 2013. The XDT was designed so that there were no pre-requisites or dependencies on specific versions of PowerShell or other tools to build the ZIP file making it run on most versions of the Windows operating system.

Phases of tool development/integration:

Phase I – Develop automated data collection tool to speed troubleshooting and identify patterns that can be used for automation.

Phase II – Integrate bugtool analysis with Citrix Insight Services to quickly identify known issues and provide resolutions.

Data collected by XDT:

Registry Keys relevant to XenTools Installations
MSinfo in NFO and text versions
System and Application event logs

Files in paths:
c:\programdata\citrix\
c:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XenTools\ (Text and log files)
c:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XenTools\Installer\ (Config and install logs)
c:\Program Files\Citrix\XenTools\ (Text and log files)
c:\Program Files\Citrix\XenTools\Installer\(Config and install logs)
c:\Windows\Inf\setupapi.dev.log
c:\Windows\Inf\setupapi.setup.log

Output of following commands:
pnputil -e
winmgmt /verifyrepository

Supported Operating Systems:
Windows 8, Windows 2012, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008

How to use the XenTools Diagnostic Tool

Download tool to the virtual machine or to a disk that can be attached to the virtual machine in cases where networking is unavailable.

Open an administrative command prompt by right clicking the CMD executable and selecting “Run as Administrator”

Change directory to download location

cd c:\users\user1\Downloads

Run the XenTools Diagnostic Tool

Usage: xtbugtool.bat <Destination Path for ZIP file>

c:\Users\User1\Downloads&gt;xtbugtool.bat c:\users\User1\Desktop

I recommend using similar paths to avoid any permission issues and make it easier to locate and retrieve the bugtool bundle.

Sample Onscreen Output:
 Windows 7
 Generating MSInfo file as NFO - human readable version of data
 Generating MSInfo file as text file - script friendly version of data
 Copying logfiles to bugtool...
 Capturing pnputil -e output...
 Capturing state of WMI repository (will fail if not ran as administrator)...
 Exporting System event log...
 Exporting Application event log...
 Finalizing process and creating ZIP file...
 Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

The file access message in the output is due to the cleanup routine trying to remove the ZIP script while it is being used. This message can safely be ignored.

Once the script is complete a ZIP file will be placed in the destination provided on the command line. An example file name would be xt-bugtool-2015.09.28-1352.zip

The tool is constantly being improved and I welcome any suggestions for improvements.
We are considering adding functionality to grab xenstore information for the bugtool as described in another blog. A request has also been made to make an ISO with the script on it to make it easier to get the information on a host with no networking. Keep the ideas and feedback coming.

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