Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner

Brief Description

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is designed for administrators who want to assess the overall health of their Active Directory and network infrastructure. The tool identifies common problems that can prevent your network environment from functioning properly.

Overview

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is a diagnostic tool that is designed for administrators of small or medium-sized networks (recommended up to 20 servers and up to 500 client computers) who want to assess the overall health of their network infrastructure. The tool identifies common problems that can prevent your network environment from functioning properly as well as problems that can interfere with infrastructure upgrades, deployments, and migration.

When run from a computer with the proper network access, the tool takes a few minutes to scan your IT environment, perform more than 100 separate checks, and collect and analyze information about the following:

Configuration of sites and subnets in Active Directory
Replication of Active Directory, the file system, and SYSVOL shared folders
Name resolution by the Domain Name System (DNS)
Configuration of the network adapters of all domain controllers, DNS servers, and e-mail servers running Microsoft Exchange Server
Health of the domain controllers
Configuration of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) for all domain controllers

If a problem is found, the tool describes the problem, indicates the severity, and links you to guidance at the Microsoft Web site (such as a Knowledge Base article) to help you resolve the problem. You can save or print a report for later review. The tool does not change anything on your computer or your network.

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System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2

Note: make sure that you have installed the latest service packs and Windows operating system updates.

Required Software: .NET Framework 2.0

Minimum Screen Resolution: 800 x 600

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Instructions

Click the Download button on this page to start the download.
Do one of the following:

To start the installation immediately, click Run.
To save the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save.
To cancel the installation, click Cancel.

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Additional Information

The computer where you run this tool must be joined to your Active Directory domain. You must use an account that is a member of the Domain Admins group (or, when prompted, provide appropriate credentials) to scan the network environment.

This tool uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect information from the servers on your network. Before you scan the environment, make sure that WMI is enabled on the servers and that Windows Firewall is configured to allow traffic on the TCP ports that are required for remote WMI access. In most cases, these are TCP ports 135 and 445 as well as dynamically assigned ports in the range 1024 to 1034.

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