Windows Explored

Here is an example of using application logs for troubleshooting. In the case here, the user was unable to connect to a video meeting hosted across the web in an application called iLinc. After logging into the initial login page, the user was presented with the following prompt requesting further authentication:

Entering her logon information did not allow the user to proceed. This was followed by another error from the application. Initial troubleshooting involved verifying the ISA firewall proxy client was enabled and using another workstation to test the connection stream using the same proxy, where it worked.  

For the most part, setup-install and application logs are usually written to the user’s temp folder, C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\TEMP, and luckily the application was log enabled and we could read it with Notepad. A quick look revealed the following line throughout: "WARNING! Connection check to https://…/EnumServices via direct timed out!"

A comparison of the logs on the failing connection and successful connection from both workstations revealed that one was successfully passing traffic through the ISA server but the other could not.

This is the failed connection attempt:
This is the successful connection:
At this point I assumed the firewall client was not passing traffic. To confirm, I attempted to change the proxy to a different server and was presented with an error: "Could not write to the configuration file…" To resolve, the firewall client for ISA was reinstalled and the problem cleared itself up.