For the purposes of using WinAudit, the term environment refers to the state of the Windows® operating system. Typically, WinAudit is used on a local machine however, the programme can be used on a remote system or even before the operating system has been installed. This note is mainly intended for administrators and technical support staff.

Remote Desktop Environment

In this environment, the programme is being run on a computer via the Remote Desktop Connection utility. To improve response time, the amount of information transmitted is reduced. In particular, a number of visual features such as colour high-lighting, shading, certain images and smooth scrolling are suppressed. The programme will operate at a colour depth of 16 colours if need be. Try to avoid selecting large segments of text with the mouse and using the print preview feature. Both of these require a lot of information to be transferred from the remote computer to the local monitor.

WinAudit works equally well when the remote connection is to a workstation in exclusive user mode and to a Terminal Server handling multiple user connections. Likewise, the programme will degrade gracefully as user account permissions decline from Administrator to Guest. When WinAudit is used via the user interface, it stores non-default settings in a configuration file (WinAudit.ini). This file is placed in the logged on user's temporary directory, as is appropriate for a non-installed programme. Any existing configuration file in the executable's folder is ignored. When used via the command line, the default output folder for the audit report and log file is the logged on user's personal folder (e.g. My Documents).

WinAudit is a single file that does not require setup, you can copy it to the remote machine and run it immediately. To do so either share out the local disks by:

- Start the Remote Desktop Connection programme
- If required, click the Options button to show the tabs
- Select the Local Resources tab
- In the section Local Devices, check the box Disk Drives

or transfer the excutable WinAudit(u).exe to the remote machine via a mechanism such as e-mail. Note, sharing drives between computers may represent a security risk.

Note, WinAudit does not have networking capabilities, strictly speaking it is not auditing a remote computer. The programme is being run on its own (local) computer.

Pre-Installation Environment

The pre-install environment is typically used to install the operating system via network media or to launch the recovery console to repair a previous Windows® installation. The Unicode version of WinAudit runs under Windows PE 2.0 and BartPE 3.1.10a.

WinAudit does not require installation, you can start it via the recovery console from a floppy disk or USB drive. The programme will display correctly at a screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels and at low colour depth if required. WinAudit is a single executable file (WinAuditu.exe) hence its web-page viewer, user interface translations, help documentation, command line usage and other features are all available in the pre-installation environment. Note, the audit result cannot be saved in compiled html (chm) format nor can the e-mail subsystem (MAPI) be used.

You can verify WinAudit's MD5 checksum by viewing the Help and About box and comparing it with that given on the website www.pxserver.com. This is a real-time check of the bytes on the media comprising the executable file. Better still, use a third party MD5 hash generator.