Chapter 12 - Troubleshooting Tools and Strategies

Many excellent network troubleshooting tools are available for Windows NT Server and Windows NT Workstation. Most are included with the product or in the Windows NT Server and Windows NT Workstation Resource Kits. Microsoft Network Monitor is an excellent network tracing tool that is included in the Microsoft Systems Management Server product.

When troubleshooting any problem, it is helpful to use a logical approach. Some questions to ask are:

• What does work?
• What doesn't work?
• How are the things that do and don't work related?
• Have the things that don't work ever worked on this computer and network?
• If so, what has changed since they last worked?

Troubleshooting a problem "from the bottom up" is often a good way to quickly isolate it. The troubleshooting tasks discussed in this chapter are organized using this "bottom up" approach.

The first section of this chapter gives an overview of TCP/IP troubleshooting tools. The next section discusses various TCP/IP troubleshooting tasks, followed by a section on using Performance Monitor and Network Monitor to analyze network behavior. The final section of this chapter provides information about common TCP/IP networking problems.