Method and system for troubleshooting a misconfiguration of a computer system based on configurations of other computer systems

A method in a computer system for identifying a configuration parameter that is likely causing a component of a computing device to exhibit an undesired behavior, the method comprising:

• collecting suspect values for suspect configuration parameters of the component;
• providing sample values for the suspect configuration parameters for the component, the sample values being retrieved from other computing devices having the component;
• and
• comparing the suspect values with the sample values to identify a suspect configuration parameter whose suspect value is likely to be causing the component of the computing device to exhibit the undesired behavior;
• wherein the collecting includes running a program that intercepts and records accesses by the component to a configuration data store;
• and
• wherein the configuration data store is a resource file.

A computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for controlling a troubleshooting system to retrieve sample values for suspect configuration parameters of an application, by a method comprising:

• identifying suspect configuration parameters of the application by monitoring the execution of the application on a computing device, the computing device having peer computing devices, the identifying of suspect configuration parameters including executing a tracer program that tracks accesses of the application of the computing device to configuration parameters;
• maintaining an index of which peer computing devices have which applications installed;
• identifying as sample computing devices the peer computing devices with the same application installed as indicated by the index;
• and
• retrieving sample values for the identified configuration parameters from the identified sample computing devices for use in identifying a suspect configuration parameter that is likely causing the application executing on the computing device to exhibit an undesired behavior.

A computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for controlling a troubleshooting system to identify a configuration parameter that is likely causing a component of a computer system to exhibit an undesired behavior, by a method of:

• providing sample values of configuration parameters for sample components, the sample values of configuration parameters for a sample component being retrieved from other computer systems having the sample components;
• receiving suspect values for suspect configuration parameters of the component that is exhibiting the undesired behavior;
• and
• identifying a suspect configuration parameter whose suspect value as likely causing the component to exhibit the undesired behavior by comparing the suspect values of the suspect configuration parameters to the sample values of the suspect configuration parameters;
• wherein the received suspect values are collected by running a program that intercepts and records accesses by the component to a configuration data store, and
• wherein the configuration data store is a registry file.