# FileWave Windows Network Sweeper ## What Occasionally FileWave clients (Windows devices) can have an issue that prevents them from communicating. Typically this is related to misconfiguration, user intervention, or a previously failed upgrade. This article and associated content gives you a tool and a process for identifying and hopefully remediating issues on remote clients. ## When/Why Periodically running this tool during peak "online" times is a good practice just to see if there are devices out there you don't know about. Of equal, and similar, use is using a GPO to enforce device enrollment and check-in. This article: [Client Deployment via GPO](https://foundry.filewave.com/mod/scorm/view.php?id=10) gives an example of deploying a client via GPO, but a batch process can be used to perform other compliance checks. ## How OK, I am convinced to give this a try, but how do I do it, and are there any pre-requisites? #### Pre-Requisites: - Be logged into a system (or launch a powershell shell) as a user that has rights to all devices...usually a domain admin - Devices you are trying to "catch" must be online, and on-network - Process assumes c$ shares are reachable and for device names to resolve, dynamic dns must be enabled - Know your FileWave server FQDN, and have a proper API token - Have downloaded and unzipped the following content:
**Windows Network Sweeper**
[![FileWave Download.png](https://kb.filewave.com/uploads/images/gallery/2023-06/scaled-1680-/LhUDCHKqr6dGiaoG-filewave-download.png)](https://kb.filewave.com/attachments/388 "Network Sweeper")

For ease of instuction, PSTools is included in this download, but it can be downloaded directly at: [PSTools download](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pstools)

#### Process Overview: - Create an inventory query of Windows devices you "haven't seen for a while". I like "OS Type"=Windows, "Last Connected" within the last 30 days but not within the past 7 days. (Both of those date ranges are arbitrary). [![image.png](https://kb.filewave.com/uploads/images/gallery/2024-09/scaled-1680-/iIIhBsjbl4PaK1FT-image.png)](https://kb.filewave.com/uploads/images/gallery/2024-09/iIIhBsjbl4PaK1FT-image.png) - Make sure the query output includes device name only (alternatively you can export IPs from the client view window, but I would not recommend using IP from an inventory query, as you are likely to get the wrong client devices in a DHCP environment: [![image.png](https://kb.filewave.com/uploads/images/gallery/2024-09/scaled-1680-/AoBkCX6WmijN9VN4-image.png)](https://kb.filewave.com/uploads/images/gallery/2024-09/AoBkCX6WmijN9VN4-image.png) - Export this report's data into the offline.txt file included in the zip file. (View --> Export Current View is very helpful for this). Remove the header line that has "Deice Name" - Run the first powershell to see if any devices are online. (They'll be written to a text file used by step 2) - If there are any devices "found", you can run the second powershell script to attempt to repair them. - This powershell will attempt to use PSExec to copy a batch file over to the client and run it (details of batch in overview video below) - The last PowerShell script is useful to double-check the devices that were "fixed", to see if they were so. And then that leaves you with a list of devices for possible manual remediation. ## Related Content - [Client Deployment via GPO](https://foundry.filewave.com/mod/scorm/view.php?id=10) - [Creating a Superprefs Fileset](https://kb.filewave.com/books/filewave-client/page/creating-a-superprefs-fileset "Creating a Superprefs Fileset") - [Inventory Queries (Reports)](https://kb.filewave.com/books/filewave-central-anywhere/chapter/inventory-queries-reports "Inventory Queries (Reports)") ## Digging Deeper It is probably very helpful to see an overview and this process in motion, so video examples follow: ##### Technical Overview: ##### ##### Example Usage: .