When troubleshooting Windows issues remotely, it's sometimes helpful to directly give the computer direct commands. The following article aims to be an easy-to-follow guide for running some of those commands, so that you can assist your SSCF representative in resolving various issues.

Opening the command prompt

This step is necessary for all of the following guides. It's as easy as clicking the Windows button in the bottom-left corner of the screen, searching for "cmd" (you can start typing immediately after you click), and then selecting the "Command Prompt" option, which should be the first result.

Updating Group policies

When to do this: ONLY when directed by your SSCF representative

Group policies (GPOs) are a Windows feature that allow SSCF to write and deploy custom rules to UCSD machines. These rules can do anything from auto-install software, to updating security settings, to granting you administrator privileges if needed. Occasionally the computer needs to be manually directed to look for updated GPOs, the instructions to do so are as follows:

0a. If you are not already, connect to the UCSD VPN.

0b. Open the command prompt as described at the start of this article

1. Type in "gpupdate /force" (no quotes) and hit Enter

2a. Generally, you'll see successful update message like the one below. If you see this, the GPOs for your machine should be up to date.

2b. You may see a longer message in the console; the last line of this message is probably a dialogue informing you that you need to log out to proceed with the update. Save anything that needs to be saved before restarting, type in the key that the prompt asks you to in order to log out, and hit Enter.

2c. If the console indicates the update failed, note the exact text of the error message, and any codes that may be provided in the console, and forward that information to your SSCF representative. A screenshot of the entire message is an easy and helpful way to capture all of the relevant information.

Reset your network connection

When to do this: If your Internet connection is slow or unreliable, or if directed to do so by your SSCF representative

Restarting computers often helps resolve issues, especially ones that are difficult to identify and correct otherwise. The following steps do roughly the same thing to your Internet connection, by breaking the connection and creating a new (ideally healthier) connection:

0. Open the command prompt as described at the start of this article

1. Type in "ipconfig /flushdns" (no quotes) into the console and hit Enter

2. Once the previous command has finished, type in "ipconfig /release" (no quotes) into the console and hit Enter.

Note: At this step, your Internet connection will be disrupted, it should come back once the next command is finished running.

3. Once the previous command has finished, type in "ipconfig /renew" (no quotes), and hit Enter:

Perform a traceroute

When to do this: When directed by your SSCF representative

Internet traffic is transmitted through an immense network of connected devices, step-by-step. A typical transmission from your computer to a website might pass through 10 pieces of network equipment; and it is often helpful to know how fast each step is occurring, or where in the process a connection is failing. The following command collects that information.

0. Open the command prompt as described at the start of this article

1. Type in "tracert 8.8.8.8" (no quotes) into the console and press Enter:

Note: You may be asked by your representative to modify this slightly. For instance a traceroute on 8.8.8.8 tests your connection to the wider Internet, whereas a traceroute to a UCSD URL tests your connection to campus.

It's likely easiest to screenshot the entire output of this command in one image and send it to your SSCF representative so that they can interpret it. 

Find your IP address

When to do this: When directed by your SSCF representative

When your computer connects to the Internet, it is assigned a label called an IP address; in a similar way that you are assigned a ticket when you go to the movies. This IP address (or the lack of one) can provide a lot of information that is helpful in diagnosing network issues, for example it can indicate where your connection is originating (home, campus, the VPN, etc).

0. Open the command prompt as described at the start of this article

1. Type in "ipconfig" (no quotes) and hit Enter.

2. If you're connected to the Internet via ethernet (a physical cable), you should see information under "Ethernet adapter Ethernet", if you're on wifi it should be under "Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi" (the two red boxes in the image below). Generally one of these will have information and the other will say "Media disconnected"; if there is information in both sections it's usefull for your SSCF representative to have both.

The most important piece of information is the IPv4 Address field (the blue box in the image above), which should present as a set of four numbers between 0 and 255; for example a typical home IP address might be 192.168.1.15.

In some cases, your computer might not have an IPv4 address but may have an IPv6 address. IPv6 addresses tend to be long and difficult to write out, it's usually not necessary to send the exact address to your SSCF representative, but informing them that you do have an IPv6 address (especially if you don't have IPv4) can be helpful.

Find your computer name (hostname)

When to do this: When directed by your SSCF representative

Every computer has a name that it (and sometimes other devices) refer to it as, sometimes called a hostname. Sometimes this name is essentially gibberish, but sometimes it's recognizable as a web-style URL: for instance hubble.ucsd.edu refers to a specific computer that used to be used by the Mocha program to access ISIS, PPS, etc.

These hostnames are used to remote into computers so that SSCF can work on them, and also to allow us to push out custom rules to one or more computers. Instructions for finding your computer's hostname are as follows:

0. Open the command prompt as described at the start of this article

1. Type in "hostname" and hit Enter.

The output will be a single line as shown in the image above. The hostname is not case-sensitive, so capitalization isn't important.

You can modify the command a bit and run hostname | clip which will copy the hostname to your clipboard, allowing you to easily past it into an email instead of having to type it out.