My Fing desktop application won't display under Windows

GregT · June 16, 2020

The Fing desktop icon in my system tray is telling me that it has two notifications to show to me. Even though most of the notifications seem to be to report outages that are too brief for me to otherwise notice, I decided to look at them. When I right clicked and picked "Open Fing Desktop", a new window labeled "Fing", with the Fing icon and a red circled "2" showed up on the task bar, but nothing is displayed. If I click on the task bar, still nothing is displayed. If I hover the mouse over this item it shows a thumbnail of what the Fing application home screen (shown below). I've tried changing my display (it's normally extended across two screens) to a single screen and back, I've restarted, but the Fing application is still not being displayed (or it's being displayed outside the bounds of the two screens that I have).

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031733/uploads/editor/03/thvvnaufxshl.png

Any idea what's up

GregT · June 17, 2020

Since looking at a thumbnail isn't very useful, I uninstalled and reinstalled the Fing desktop this morning. Now I get a different thumbnail when I hover the mouse over the taskbar, but Fing Desktop still won't display. Running with only one monitor, this is what I see:

If I click on the task bar item for Fing desktop it becomes highlighted as if the window were active, but the screen is blank.

If I click on it again, it's deselected and the previous task bar item becomes highlighted.

Any idea what's happening and how to fix it?

Robin_Ex_Fing · June 18, 2020

Hi @GregT
Thanks for your post. Can you try to reboot the windows device and then check? if restarting PC haven't help to resolve this behaviour, these commands may be useful to windows (to launch from Command Prompt as administrator):

Stop service command: sc stop Fing.Agent

Start service command: sc start Fing.Agent

Fing agent needs the Windows libraries which are installed with the WinPcap package during FingDesktop installation, it used to make packet capture and filtering useful our engine to protocol analyzers and network monitors.
Fing agent service cannot work properly without the correct installation of WinPcap.

Please open the command prompt and return the output:

sc query npf

it's useful to understand if the WinPcap has been installed correctly and it is running properly.

If possible please uninstall the older version of WinPcap and install the latest version of Win10Pcap from here and check.

GregT · June 18, 2020

Neither rebooting nor stopping and restarting the Fing Agent makes any difference. Here are the cmd outputs:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18363.900]
(c) 2019 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sc stop Fing.Agent

SERVICE_NAME: Fing.Agent
        TYPE               : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 3 STOP_PENDING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0 (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sc start Fing.Agent

SERVICE_NAME: Fing.Agent
        TYPE               : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 2 START_PENDING
                                (NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0 (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x7d0
        PID                : 5736
        FLAGS              :

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sc query npf

SERVICE_NAME: npf
        TYPE               : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER
        STATE              : 4 RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0 (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

I'll try reinstalling the Win10Pcap next.

To me it appears as if the Fing application is working, but it's "displaying" outside of the available desktop window.

GregT · June 19, 2020

The installed version of WinPCap (from my reinstall yesterday) identifies itself as "WinPcap for Fing 4.1.3", version 4.1.0.2980. The version at the link you recommend says it is "WinPcap 4.1.3", version 4.1.0.2980. That seems like the right version to me. And it was working a week ago.

The WinPcap site also says:

WinPcap Has Ceased Development

The WinPcap project has ceased development and WinPcap and WinDump are no longer maintained. We recommend using Npcap instead.
If you do insist upon using WinPcap, be aware that its installer was built with an old version of NSIS and as a result is vulnerable to DLL hijacking.

Having a known, built-in vulnerability doesn't sound like a great thing to have.

GregT · June 19, 2020

After doing all of that I decided to back to dual monitor mode and the Fing application reappeared. The other monitor was connected when it originally disappeared, so it wasn't just that, but clearly something changed.

At any rate it reappeared. If it disappears again I'll try and see if there is a pattern that I can identify.