Collecting BCM client logs from Windows workstation

Troubleshooting client workstation problems might be tedious task sometimes. Audio device problems, sudden network hiccups or software failures can only be traced from client logs. Collecting client logs can be automated with simple scripts. In this post I have included a couple of handy log collector utilities that could be used as part of troubleshooting process.

Log level setting

Client logs can be enabled from BCM System Configurator. It is possible to set Log level in users setting template or individually per user.

If user-level modification is not denied user may adjust the log level from CDT settings.

One can start client troubleshooting after the log level is set high enough. BCM client saves log/txt files in users temp folder (%TEMP%). Typically log files starts with prefix BCM/CDT and contains local date/time in the name.

Collecting log files

In this post you can find two example utilities attached. Sendtosupport.bat* collects some system information and trace files and creates email with file attachment. Bat uses compress.vbs (from the same folder) for compressing files with Windows compression methods. This method can be replaced with your favorite compression tool.

In the beginning of sendtosupport.bat a couple of variables are defined.

mailto variable contains support mail address. This must be change to a real address. Similarly msubject and mbody (mail subject and body) can be changed (and localised if you will).

The sample tries to use a couple of versions of Outlook. One should use mail client that can be found from target environment.

Note also that these utils are only tested in Windows 7 (64bit) client with an user having admin rights.

*extract and remove txt postfix – that is only due that only text files are allowed in SCN