Version 76 of Windows Inspection Tool Set

Updated 2007-12-27 17:08:52 by Ro

What: Windows Inspection Tool Set

 Where: http://wits.magicsplat.com/
 Description: provides you with cross-linked, filtered views of a
    Windows system.  These views include customizable list
    views with filtering and sorting capabilities, and
    detailed property page views for individual objects. Where
    applicable, views are linked to allow for easy navigation
    between related objects.
    Currently at version 2.0.5.
 Updated: 04/2007 
 Contact: See web site

APN 24 April 2007: Windows Inspection Tool Set (WiTS) 2.0.5 has been released. The release is supported on Windows 2000, XP and 2003.

See [L1 ] for details, downloads and source. See [L2 ] for a sample screen shot.

See http://wits.magicsplat.com/versionhistory.html for a list of changes since previous releases.

What is WiTS?

WiTS provides you with cross-linked, filtered views of a Windows system. These views include customizable list views with optional filtering and sorting capabilities, and detailed property page views for individual objects. Where applicable, views are linked to allow for easy navigation between related objects.

In addition to viewing properties, WiTS provides tools for some common tasks related to these components.

WiTS also includes a configurable event monitor that can notify you of various events like new network connections, process starts and exits, service state changes, system resource exhaustion and more.

WiTS starts up automatically and installs itself into the system tray in the taskbar. In addition, it can be configured with hotkey support for quick access to various views.

Currently supported object types include:

  • Operating system and hardware
  • Processes
  • Services
  • Users
  • Groups
  • Logon sessions
  • Drives and volumes
  • Local and remote shares
  • Network interfaces
  • Network connections
  • Network routing tables
  • Printers
  • Loaded modules
  • Kernel drivers

WiTS is built using (amongst other packages) Tile, tablelist, TWAPI, Snit, winico, TkPNG and scrodget.


MHo, 2006/07/26: If I klick Remote Shares, an error message arises: Invalid or unknown path format (running on w2ksp4). Skipping two or three error messages, the list of remote shares is displayed.

MHo, 2006/12/22: Just installed 1.1 and tested again, same result.

APN OK, I can reproduce the problem, or at least one of them. My mistake was assuming that the local device name (if mapped) must always end in a ":" (this is actually a TWAPI bug, not WiTS). I've checked in a fix which will be in a release post-holidays. APN Feb 27, 2007: I believe this is now fixed as of WiTS 2.0.1, at least the scenario I just described. Please test and see if it fixes your problem as well. MHo: With v2.0.1, the problem is solved! Great!


CJL : Mostly very nice. There's a visual glitch when expanding a 'tab' on the left side for the first time - there's a white flash as the rectangle is drawn initially too big, and then reduced to suit the size of its contents. More significant is "Error: Could not retrieve global user or group information: The user name could not be found" which occurs when I click my username listed in 'Process Summary'. I'm on a fully updated XP box, logging in to a domain provided by a Samba server.

APN: CJL, does the message show in an error dialog with a Details button? If so, could you click on the Details button to get the errorInfo stack trace and either post it here or mail to me at apnadkarni at users dot sourceforge dot net ? Unfortunately, I do not have a domain environment for testing so the user lookups are untested in that kind of setup. The visual glitch is something else I've been trying to get rid of without much success. Without going into a whole lot of detail, I want the dropdown to fit the contents but cannot figure out how big it should be (taking into account wrapping and font size) until Tk draws it on the screen first. APN In 2.0.1, I've hacked around the visual glitch mentioned by creating windows offscreen, expanding the menus, closing the menus, then moving the windows back on screen. Hacky, but I haven't been able to work out any other way.

APN Thanks for the feedback. This motivated me enough to set up a VmWare based Windows domain test environment. I've fixed the bug and uploaded a new release 1.1.1 to SourceForge. In the process, also discovered that WiTS is not particularly friendly when you belong to the domain but the domain is not reachable - it constantly shows popup dialogs complaining about this if the process list view is open.


escargo 26 Feb 2007 - Somewhat against my will I have Windows Vista on a newly acquired laptop. I imagine that there are going to start being a lot of Windows Vista questions about various Tcl and Tk functions and applications. Are there any known issues with WITS and Vista? APN There are no known issues only because it has never been tested! My guess is that there will be issues with TWAPI which it uses and possibly with Tile as well. Unfortunately, I have neither a license for Vista, nor the hardware capable of running it. In case you do want to try it, the installer will refuse to install on Vista (I think), so you will need to install elsewhere and copy the wits.exe executable. Please post back with results if you do try it.

escargo 27 Feb 2007 - I put the wits.exe (along with the directories it came in) in my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4.GB USB Flash memory device. I double-clicked on wits.exe and it errored out. Then I selected it again, but right clicked on it and picked "Run as Administrator." Then it worked. I haven't tested everything, but what I have tried has worked. It looks just like a native Windows Aero application.


HE 27 Feb 2007 - Why is wits distributed as msi-installer file (1.1.1) or as setup.exe(2.0 beta)? The version 1.1.1 contains an Starpack. This can used without any other installation (Works for me on XP, w2000, w2k-server). APN Both versions contain a wits.exe that can be used standalone. As to why an installer is used, it's because I want it to be as close to a conventional Windows app as possible - create shortcuts in the Start menu, show up in the Add/Remove programs, leave nothing behind on disk or in the registry when uninstalled etc. In the longer run, I also hope to add other utilities so it will not be a single executable. HE Perhaps it is possible additional to provide the starkit/starpack? MHo I see absolutely no reason for using windows installer (msi) technology in this case. To understand the misterious msi, one have to study thousands of documents over three months. In old MSDOS days, copy *.* was the prefered way, perhaps editing a little clear-text config here and there afterwords. What about an alternative installation archive (.ZIP or so) with .exe and .kit inside? APN Sorry I don't plan on doing this. I guess I just don't see it as that big a deal to install. Eventually I want this to be on the standard freeware sites (non-Tcl) so I would like it to follow the standard practice most packages use. Those who want just wits.exe to carry around can just copy it and uninstall. If one of you does take the trouble of creating a zip or whatever, please remember to include the full nuvola.zip image archive as well since it is under LGPL. For a future release, I plan on U3-enabled distribution - that I'll probably make just a simple exe.

LV It might be useful if HE would discuss why they care about how the code is distributed? I've not tried this tool, because in general, on my xp system, I cannot get permission to run the various normal MSDOS installers. I can, however, make use of starpack applications. So for me, in general, I prefer starpacks. As I said, I've not tried the installers for this app, so I don't know whether or not it would work. I don't care to raise the security alerts. I do note, however, that the Vista report above talks about not being able to run the application except as administrator. That definitely means I won't be able to use it...


MHo 03 Mar 2007 - I see a new problem calling local shares on my WinXP-SP2 system:

 Error looking up account SID:  Zuordnungen von Kontennamen und Sicherheitskennungen wurden nicht durchgef�hrt.
 Error looking up account SID:  Zuordnungen von Kontennamen und Sicherheitskennungen wurden nicht durchgef�hrt.
     while executing
 "$func $opts(system) $account"
     (procedure "_lookup_account" line 20)
     invoked from within
 "_lookup_account LookupAccountSid S-1-5-32-547 -system {}"
     ("eval" body line 1)
     invoked from within
 "eval [list _lookup_account LookupAccountSid $sid] $args"
     (procedure "lookup_account_sid" line 2)
     invoked from within
 "lookup_account_sid $account -system $opts(system)"
     (procedure "map_account_to_name" line 5)
     invoked from within
 "map_account_to_name [get_ace_sid $ace]"
     (procedure "get_ace_text" line 28)
     invoked from within
 "get_ace_text $ace -offset "\t    " -resourcetype $opts(resourcetype)"
     (procedure "twapi::get_security_descriptor_text" line 19)
     invoked from within
 "twapi::get_security_descriptor_text $vals(-secd) -resourcetype file"
     (procedure "::wits::app::localshare::Snit_methodrefresh" line 31)
     invoked from within
 "::wits::app::localshare::Snit_methodrefresh ::wits::app::localshare ::wits::app::localshare::Snit_inst4 ::wits::obj::localshare3   ::wits::obj::localsha..."
     ("uplevel" body line 1)
     invoked from within
 "uplevel 1 $command $args"
     invoked from within
 "$_producer refresh $_propertiesOfInterest"
     (procedure "::wits::obj::publisher::Snit_method_refreshhandler" line 14)
     invoked from within
 "::wits::obj::publisher::Snit_method_refreshhandler ::wits::obj::publisher ::wits::obj::publisher::Snit_inst340  ::wits::app::localshare::publisher339 :..."
     ("uplevel" body line 1)
     invoked from within
 "uplevel 1 $command $args"
     invoked from within
 "::wits::app::localshare::publisher339 _refreshhandler"
     ("uplevel" body line 1)
     invoked from within
 "uplevel 1 [linsert $args 0 $self]"
     invoked from within
 "::snit::RT.CallInstance ::wits::obj::publisher::Snit_inst340 _refreshhandler"
     ("after" script)

APN Matthew, could you translate the German error for me? Also if you open a WiTS console and type the command

   twapi::LookupAccountSid "" S-1-5-32-547

do you get the same error? If so, could you post the value of $::errorCode? The SID corresponds to the built-in Power Users group. The error seems to indicate it is somehow missing from the system. MHo: I don't know the english error text... Just tested on another XPSP2 and on W2kSP4 - everything ok. Don't tested on the system where the error exist again, yet - it seems that something special is going on there...

MHo, 2007-12-20: Now, five hundret years later it seems, I've done the following on w2ksp4:

% package require twapi
1.1
% twapi::LookupAccountSid "" S-1-5-32-547
Hauptbenutzer VORDEFINIERT 4
%

2007-12-27 Ro: Great work Ashok. Been using it this morning and enjoy it. Will keep it in my toolbox, especially useful to me is the netstat like functionality and the process information. Overall a nice use of twapi. Another feature I like is the network shares list.

I second the request to get rid of MSI, you should distribute it as a single .exe, I know a lot of the freeware guys like that too. Lean and mean and all that jazz.

You can copy other utility exe's you want to bundle to a temp folder from the starpack if you wanted a single exe.

The Network Connections window could be less cpu intensive. I've got a lot of connections listed there, it could stand to be faster.

Thanks for a useful tool. Also, the look is very native, I can tell you spend a lot of time on that and it shows.


Category Windows