Watson Diagnostics Tool
Gaea ships with Watson.exe, an advanced diagnostics tool that examines your Gaea installation as well as your general hardware configuration, and allows you to create a diagnostics package that you can submit to our Technical Support for assistance.
Watson's goal is to identify and collect small bits of information that may not be readily apparent to the user, or may not be visible without a bit of digging. For example, a small setting in the Preferences may be causing an issue. Watson can identify patterns based on the existing application logs and certain settings, or collect crash logs from recent incidents.
These logs help us understand your Gaea installation, your hardware and relevant drivers, and other similar information. This reduces the need for us to ask you questions and get you solutions to problems at a much quicker pace.
Starting Watson
When you start Watson, available through the Start Menu in the QuadSpinner Gaea program group, you can choose to run optional tests. In most situations, these additional tests are not necessary and can be safely skipped unless instructed by a support technician.
The Diagnostics Process
The diagnostics collection process is fairly quick. Watson will collect the data in plain, human readable formats. If enabled in the previous step, the optional diagnostics will include a detailed scan of the Windows Event Log for any additional data on Gaea and Archon crashes.
Before running tests, a benchmark build is run using all nodes available in Gaea. This helps diagnose issues in specific nodes. This test can be somewhat slow as 90+ nodes will be built at 1024 resolution.
Submitting the Ticket
Once the diagnostics package has been compiled, you can open a new ticket and attach the package.
Your privacy
Any support logs submitted are usually discarded within 4-6 weeks of closing the ticket. We may retain some of the logs for a longer period in certain situations. For example, if the issue relates to an on-going bug hunt or development task.
If you submit a .TOR file, we hold it in utmost confidence and discard it along with the log as outlined above. If we retain the logs, we will still permanently delete the .TOR files.
Extensibility API Fix Stairstepping