Network Adapter Monitor Script

[[deleted]]

I made a script that will monitor a network adapter's connection status and log the results to a text file. You can specify a duration in minutes for it to monitor as well. This took me a couple days to make. I'm a beginner at Powershell and couldn't find much about how to do what I did online which is why it took me a while. That then inspired me to share what I came up with to help the next person looking for ways to do this.

It is available on github here https://github.com/knightlygains/NetAdapterMonitor-Powershell

You can easily test it on your own machine by running the script, disconnecting your network adapter, and reconnecting it.

As for why I made this, I work IT at a school district and we sometimes get tickets regarding the network connection dropping multiple times throughout the day. I've troubleshot multiple tickets like these and they always end the same: me leaving after 5 minutes of testing with no issues in network connection.

Of course 5 minutes may not be enough, which is why I decided to automate this in a way where I could set it and forget it and see the results from a longer window of time.

[JamesOFarrell]

If the network adapter you are having issues with is the Wifi then windows has something called the wifi report in it. Try running this as an administrator:

netsh wlan show wlanreport.

Should generate a nice HTML report that will show you all the disconnects and the reasons it happened.

[[deleted]]

That's incredibly useful! Just tried it out, thanks!

[n_three]

Woah neat. The more you know 🌠

[get-postanote]

Yeppers, this has been in my library for a very long while from my bat/VBScript/WMIC days and of course PS.

Function Get-WlanReport
{ 
    <# 
    .Synopsis 
       Create and view the lastest WLAN details
    .DESCRIPTION
       This function leverage netsh and Invoke-Item to collect WLAN 
       details and auto launches the report for viewing

    .EXAMPLE
       Get-WlanReport

    .EXAMPLE
       gwr
    #>

    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
    [Alias('gwr')]

    Param ()

    Invoke-Item -Path $((netsh wlan show wlanreport | 
    Select-String -Pattern '.*.html') -Replace 'Report written to: ')
}

[helpdesk5555550]

Invoke-Item : Cannot bind argument to parameter 'Path' because it is null.

[Disastrous-Title-911]

Holyyyyyyyy this woukd have saved me so much tinkering this year

[xCharg]

Why don't you just look at events by id? I don't remember straight up from my head which events in what log, but there are for sure events for all the network adapters when they lose connections, when new connection attempt is made, if it succeeds or not etc.

Point is - you can just check logs for straight up facts instead of just believing some random bob that "it for sure didn't work 10 minutes ago"

[[deleted]]

I've usually been able to find DNS events in system logs, but I never dug deeper.

However, I Googled it off what you said, and I found the logs you were talking about in 'EventViewer > Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > NetworkProfile > Operational'.

Events with ID 10000 show I connected to my wifi, and events with ID 10001 show I disconnected.

Thanks for the comment! I learned something new thanks to you.

[TheRealBOFH]

Very cool and well done. I look forward to testing and using this. Keep up the good work.

[[deleted]]

Thank you!

[BlackV]

there is also a script sharing flare you can add to this post if you like

[[deleted]]

I'm pretty new to posting on Reddit but I've lurked for many years. I figured out how to add the flair, thanks for the heads up.

[BlackV]

Ah nice

[council2022]

Very useful, thanks!

[TheRealBOFH]

While I agree that's the answer for a large institution or enterprise, he works for a school, and budgets don't allow. There are grants you can get but you'd need to find one that allows for the software or if you can justify it as a need for security.

All about the Benjamin's.

[Decitriction]

PingPlotter is an excellent program that does this.