WhatsUp Gold - How to verify that WhatsUp Gold can monitor a NT Service

Question/Problem: When creating a service to monitor a specific NT service, is the enumeration process necessary? And what if the enumeration of the services results in a blank list on a specific NT machine?

Answer/Solution: The trick is to set up a service using the service name. That means you have to know what it is called. That is why we have enumeration in the first place. It is to list the services so the specific service could be selected from the list. However, one could get the name by looking at the same service running on a different target.

On the other hand, if the enumeration process produces a blank result then there are ways to verify if WhatsUp Gold is causing this. The NT Service enumeration process does not produce output to the Debug Log - so one must not assume that there is a cause and effect relationship between the two. However, there is a very good third party utility that can be used to get the same information:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pstools.shtml

The psService tool uses the same API as WhatsUp Gold. If it receives an error while attempting to enumerate then the problem does not lie with WhatsUp Gold itself -- but this will still help us to get to the root cause. If psService gives the service name then use that name to configure the WhatsUp Gold NT service monitor. Then set up a device on a map with the monitor and do a check with the debug log open, and submit the log to technical support -- or use it to fix the problem directly -- the log is pretty verbose.

NOTE: if there is an aversion to using free software off the net then use the equivalent SC tool from the MS Resource kit. It will do the same job with a few less bells and whistles.

See also:
WhatsUp Gold - NT Service plug-in returns RPC server is unavailable