Skip to main content

Manually initiate a scan

When a change has been made and results need to be delivered, or if you need to run a scan for support reasons, you can manually initiate a scan outside of the regular schedule for Snow Inventory Agent for Windows.

Initiate a scan of online computers​

Use the commands below at a command prompt to trigger the agent to start a manual scan of the current computer and send the scan result to a Snow Inventory endpoint as defined in the <Server><Endpoint> element of the agent configuration file. A manual scan will start regardless of any schedule or other configuration. However, if there is a scan already running, a manual scan will not start.

Scan the current computer:

snowagent.exe scan

Send the scanning result:

snowagent.exe send

The snowagent.exe scan command runs in the user context, that is, in the context of the user who manually executes the command, with implied limitations, if the user is not administrator of the computer.

One can trigger the Snow Inventory Agent Windows service to run a scan in the service context, that is, in the context of the user account that runs the Snow Inventory Agent Windows service, by manually executing the sc control SnowInventoryAgent5 128 command.

Start a scan that dumps only metering data from computer memory, aggregates, and sends it:

sc control SnowInventoryAgent5 132
note

This command triggers the Snow Inventory Agent Windows service to execute in the service context, that is, as the user account that is configured to run the Windows service, which means it does not require to be run in an administrator context.

This example will send metering data in a few seconds instead of performing a regular scan, which can take minutes to finish, depending on the agent configuration and computer performance.

Initiate a scan of offline computers​

In scenarios where a computer cannot communicate with the Snow Inventory endpoint, a one-time scan can be performed.

  1. Copy the Snow Inventory Agent files to a directory on a USB memory stick.

  2. On the offline computer to be scanned:

    1. Insert the memory stick into the USB port.

    2. In a Command Prompt window, navigate to the folder where the agent files are placed.

    3. Run the following command to make the agent perform an instant scan of the current computer:

      snowagent.exe scan

      The scan result is put on the USB memory stick in a subdirectory called data.

  3. Move the USB stick to an online computer with access to Snow Inventory.

  4. On the online computer, run the following command to make the agent send the scan result in the data subdirectory to a Snow Inventory endpoint, as defined in the agent configuration file:

    snowagent.exe send