Troubleshoot computer monitoring
Updated: March 30, 2011
Applies To: Windows Home Server 2011
Troubleshooting Computer Monitoring
This section lists various issues that you may encounter while monitoring your computers in the network through alerts.
“Computer Monitoring Error” in the Alert Viewer
Problem You get a “Computer Monitoring Error” in the Alert Viewer of the Dashboard or the Launchpad.
Solution View the “Computer Monitoring Error” on Dashboard or Launchpad wiki article to learn about known causes and their resolutions.
Cannot send the test email for the alert
Problem You get “Cannot send the test email for alert” error
Cause This error may occur due to any of the following reasons:
You have entered an incorrect SMTP server name.
You have entered an incorrect port number.
You have selected SSL incorrectly.
You have entered incorrect user name and password information.
Solution You can obtain the information about SMTP server name, port number, and SSL usage from your Internet Service provider. The table below lists some of the commonly used SMTP server names and their port numbers.
Table 1Examples of SMTP server names, authentication and SSL encryption requirements, and their port numbers.
| SMTP Server | SSL Required | Authentication Required | Port Number | Account Name/Login Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
smtp.gmail.com |
Yes |
Yes |
587 |
Provide full email address with domain name and password for authentication. |
smtp.live.com |
Yes |
Yes |
587 |
Provide full email address with domain name and password for authentication. |
smtp.comcast.net |
Yes |
No |
587 |
Provide full email address with domain name and password for authentication. |
smtp.mail.yahoo.com |
No |
Yes |
25 |
Provide only the email address without domain name for user name. |
Note
You can also review the log files for email notifications for alert at c:\programdata\windows server\logs\Sharedservicehost-alertserviceconfig.
Test email notification does not list any alerts even though the Alert Viewer has alerts listed
Problem The test email notifications for alerts does not display any alerts even though there are alerts listed in the Alert Viewer.
Solution Not all alerts that are reported in the Alert Viewer are notified via email. Only the alerts that are configured to be escalated as an email notification within their health definition files are sent as emails to the specified email recipients.
When you click Apply and send email, typically, you will receive a sample email notification with no health alerts listed in the body text of the email. However, if any health alert that is configured for sending email notifications is identified during this test mail process, then these alerts will be included in the test email. For a list of alerts that result in email notifications, see the “Alerts that result in email notifications” earlier in this article.
Active alerts are still displayed for an uninstalled application
Problem Active alerts for an application are still being displayed even though the application and its health definition file have been uninstalled.
Solution You must manually delete the active alerts of the uninstalled application. To delete an alert, do the following:
To delete an alert from the server using the Dashboard
From the server, open the Dashboard.
On the navigation pane, click the any of the displayed alerts icon (critical, warning, and informational). This launches the Alert Viewer
In the Alert Viewer, select and right-click the alert that you want to delete, and then click Delete this alert.