At the end of April 2009, Microsoft unveiled to the world a new service that it referred to as societal networking. A few days over a month later, the Redmond company is allowing testers of Microsoft Vine to access and download the Microsoft Vine Diagnostic Tool. The label is self-explanatory, and the new tool can be used to harvest diagnostic information on the users' Microsoft Vine installations. Vine comes with a client that needs to be installed locally on the users' machine. The Diagnostic Tool is designed to streamline the troubleshooting process associated with resolving eventual Vine-related functionality issues.

“The Vine diagnostic tool (vinediag.hta) collects diagnostic information of your installation of the Microsoft Vine beta, and stores it in a file on your computer. When you are discussing a problem in the Vine beta on the discussion forum, the support team might ask you to run this tool and share the file it creates. The information in the file could help the support team identify the issue and propose a solution,” Microsoft explained.

According to the Redmond company, Vine is supported on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100, but also on Windows Vista and Windows XP. Dubbed a societal networking service, Vine is not designed in any way as a rival to existing social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. Instead, the service is complementary to social networks, allowing users to build communities and to stay up to date with a variety of information with their contacts. With Vine, Microsoft is attempting to give social groups a tool designed to help them easily communicate and organize. Usage scenarios where Vine can make the difference unveiled by the company involve anything from household emergencies to natural disasters.

“In the Windows Explorer, find the vinediag.hta file. Double-click the file to start the diagnostic tool. The diagnostic tool will start. Click the Next button to continue, and accept the license agreement. Then click the Start button to start collecting information. This may take from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to complete. When the tool is complete, it will show a message indicating it is done. A file named vinediag.xml should now show up in the folder where you started the diagnostic tool. You can double-click that file to view the information collected. You can now share vinediag.xml with the Vine support team,” the software giant added.

Microsoft Vine Diagnostic Tool is available for download here.