AdFender never sends a diagnostic report on its own, and it has nowhere to send one to. You choose to create it, it is saved to a file you pick, and you decide whether to attach it to an email.
If the problem is one particular website, do this first
The per-site detail that answers “why did AdFender break this page” only exists if the activity log was running when it happened. The log is off by default and is never written to your hard drive.
- Turn the log on. Open the dashboard, go to Activity, and click Start logging.
- Make the problem happen again. Visit the site and reproduce what went wrong.
- Then export the report, as below, naming the site when it asks.
Logging stops when you close AdFender, and what it collected is discarded. Skip this part if the problem is not tied to one site — nothing is being blocked at all, say — because the rest of the report answers that on its own.
Creating the report
- Right-click the AdFender icon in the system tray, near the clock.
- Choose Generate diagnostic report… A Save AdFender diagnostic report window opens. Somewhere easy to find again, like your Desktop, is a good choice.
- Leave Run live filter test ticked if you can leave the PC alone for a minute, and untick it if you cannot. AdFender opens a page in your browser and checks the whole filtering path end to end, then puts the result in the report. It is the single most useful thing in it when the complaint is that nothing is being blocked.
- Fill in Broken site (optional) with the address of the site that is misbehaving, if there is one. The box appears only while the activity log is on; with it off, the window says per-site detail is not included. This limits the activity log’s detail in the report to that site; left blank, the report carries only counts from the log. Other sections, such as recent errors, can still name websites, so read the report before you send it.
- Save. You get one file, named with the date and time. If AdFender has crashed recently, a crash file is saved beside it; it can contain fragments of web addresses, so send it only if we ask for it.
In AdFender 3.0 the menu item is available only during a trial or with an active license. If it is missing, check the license status on the dashboard: License messages and what they mean is the quicker route. If you still want to write to us, copy the message the dashboard shows into your email.
Read it before you send it
The file is plain text. Open it in Notepad if you would like to see what you are sending — the first thing in it is a plain statement of what it contains.
In outline, a report holds:
- your AdFender version and settings, and which filter lists and apps are on;
- your Windows version, the install location (which can include your Windows user name), and whether AdFender is running with administrator rights;
- the state of AdFender’s parts — lists loaded, certificate validity, license status, whether our update server was reachable;
- the names of browsers and security software installed, and which browsers are running;
- recent errors and warnings from AdFender’s own log, which can mention the address of a site where something went wrong;
- the live filter test result and the per-site activity detail, if you asked for either.
The full list, and what we do with a report once it reaches us, is in our privacy policy.
Sending it
Attach the file to an email to support@adfender.com. Tell us in a line or two what you expected and what happened instead — the report says what AdFender was doing, but only you can say what looked wrong.