Scanning manually

Manual scan can be used to inventory assets that are not connected to your network or are inaccessible for regular scanning for one reason or another. For example, assets running Windows XP Home Edition can only be scanned this way due to OS limitations.

Manual scanning of any system involves three basic steps.

1. Copy the agent executable to the asset you need to scan

The agent (tniwinagent.exe) is located in TSD’s installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Total Software Deployment).

2. Perform the scan

Launch the agent on the remote system. When the scanning is complete, a data file will be generated and, by default, placed into the directory the scanner is run from.You can use these command line parameters for tniwinagent.exe:
  • /path:"\\server\share" allows to set a path to a folder where the data file will be placed;
  • /delay:XX specifies the gap in seconds between the agent’s launch time and the start of the scan;
  • /overwrite overwrites the data file in case the target folder already contains its older version (otherwise, new files appended with (2), (3), etc. will be created after each scan);
  • /scripted is required for running the logon script scan;
  • /debug allows to scan an asset in debug mode (when scanning errors are detected in normal mode). A special data file will be created, which can be sent to the developers in order for them to search for and fix possible scan errors;
  • /driver:{x} controls the low-level hardware scan mode. Set x to:
0 — to disable low-level hardware scan completely; 1 — to always skip disk drive scan (in order to avoid BSOD); 2 — to skip disk drive scan automatically if the faulty driver is present (default value); 3 — to enable full low-level hardware scan.
  • /admin runs the agent with administrator rights;
  • /noadmin runs the agent without administrator rights;
  • /keepdriver keeps the low-level hardware scan driver installed;
  • /removedriver removes the low-level hardware scan driver (if it’s installed);
  • /nodriver disables low-level hardware scan (same as driver:0);
  • /logoff logs the current user off (post-scan);
  • /reboot restarts the computer (post-scan);
  • /poweroff powers off the computer (post-scan; same as /shutdown);
  • /shutdown shuts the computer down (post-scan; same as /poweroff).
Locate the generated data file and send it back to the system that runs your copy of TSD (or any other place TSD has access to).

3. Import the data into your Storage

You can do this in two ways: either by placing the file directly into the Storage folder or by using the Import menu.
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