integrate network diagnostics in help file?

Not sure where to put this question, but it has to do with Windows and
Networking...

I'm about to write some sort of helpfile to get decent feedback from the
users I'm supporting when they have a network problem while working remotely.
Currently I get messages like "it doens't work", but that's hardly useful.
So I need to ask users (on the phone) to check their cables, type ipconfig,
type ping ourcompanyserver, etc to find out what's wrong.

I figured it'd be easier for everyone if they had a helpfile on their pc
which guides them through all this. The result would be that for each
possible scenario a predefined code would be returned to the user. This way
when the user calls me and mentions this code, I would know that for example
their ethernet is plugged in correctly, they received an IP address from the
DHCP but they can't reach our company server, which in turn would tell me
that their ADSL line is probably down.

Quite a long intro here... Anyway, I was wondering if there's something a
little more intelligent than a Windows helpfile to do this. Right now I call
a batch file from the help file to run the ipconfig and ping commands, but
I'm still depending on the user to interprete the results and click on the
appropriate screenshot in the helpfile to go to the next question.

Can this be automated somehow? I want to make this as foolproof as
possible... :-)

This is already automated for you.
Just open the Windows help (assume you have XP), then navigate to
"Networking and web" category, "Fixing a networking problem",
Pick a task... Diagnose network configuration.
Vista has a similar diagnostic tool.

Regards,
--pa



SyntaX TerroR wrote:
> Not sure where to put this question, but it has to do with Windows and
> Networking...
>
> I'm about to write some sort of helpfile to get decent feedback from the
> users I'm supporting when they have a network problem while working remotely.
> Currently I get messages like "it doens't work", but that's hardly useful.
> So I need to ask users (on the phone) to check their cables, type ipconfig,
> type ping ourcompanyserver, etc to find out what's wrong.
>
> I figured it'd be easier for everyone if they had a helpfile on their pc
> which guides them through all this. The result would be that for each
> possible scenario a predefined code would be returned to the user. This way
> when the user calls me and mentions this code, I would know that for example
> their ethernet is plugged in correctly, they received an IP address from the
> DHCP but they can't reach our company server, which in turn would tell me
> that their ADSL line is probably down.
>
> Quite a long intro here... Anyway, I was wondering if there's something a
> little more intelligent than a Windows helpfile to do this. Right now I call
> a batch file from the help file to run the ipconfig and ping commands, but
> I'm still depending on the user to interprete the results and click on the
> appropriate screenshot in the helpfile to go to the next question.
>
> Can this be automated somehow? I want to make this as foolproof as
> possible... :-)