How To How to obtain basic and advanced system information.

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How to obtain basic and advanced system information



Depending on if you've been asked for basic or advanced system information, will be the determining factor in what you need to do in order to find and relate that information, so the steps below are among some of the possible ways to do that.


Your computer is the sum of the individual hardware components and it's the specific attributes of those components that need to be identified in order to begin seeking solutions. Providing the necessary information makes it much easier for those who are trying to help you find a solution, to do so.


Try to include as much of the information listed in bold below as possible when posting basic information. When possible make sure to include the brand or manufacturer name, the relevant series (If any), model number and whether or not any modification such as overclocking or firmware updates have been performed on the device.
(Be sure to find and provide model numbers. Just saying it's a Gigabyte AM3+ motherboard with a 970 chipset is not extremely helpful without a model and revision number.)

• 
  * Mac, PC, laptop or other pre-built device model number
  (Only if a pre-built system. Provide exact model number, not just model series i.e., HP envy m6-1205dx, not just HP envy m6.)
  
  * Processor brand, series and model number.
  
  * Motherboard brand, model AND revision number.
  (Usually printed somewhere on the board itself.)
  
  * Graphics card or iGPU model number.
  (Include sub model information for special editions)
  
  * Memory brand, model, speed, type and number of physical modules.
  
  * Power supply brand and model number.
  ( This is the most important component in your system and since the market is flooded with extremely poor and borderline quality units, the brand, series and model number do make a difference.)
  
  * Sound card brand and model number.
  (For aftermarket or add in cards. Include specific chipset if known.)
  
  * NIC or Ethernet card brand and model number
  (Include specific chipset if known.)
  
  * Storage device brands and model numbers
  ( HDD and SSD devices.)
  
  * Other additional attached devices
  (SATA controllers, fan controllers, specialty devices)
  
  * Operating system information
  (Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or other OS version and whether or not it is a 32 or 64 bit version. This is important for troubleshooting drivers.)
  
  * Motherboard BIOS version
  ( This can often be the source of hardware issues.)

The most basic information can be extremely useful as a starting point and here are a couple of ways to obtain it.


WINDOWS SYSTEM PROPERTIES SUMMARY

The least detailed but easiest option for gathering a few system details is contained on the main tab of the control panel "System properties".

In Windows Vista and 7 you can right click on My computer and select properties.

In Windows 8 and 8.1 you can right click on the desktop start button and select System. You can also simply navigate to the control panel and then open the System category in all Windows systems from XP to 8.1.




DXDIAG.EXE

Typing dxdiag.exe in the desktop start menu search or run box and clicking OK will give you a slightly more in depth basic system summary including the operating system version. This can be useful if you only need very basic system information or information specific to the graphics or sound hardware.

WINDOWS SYSTEM INFORMATION UTILITY

Windows system information is accessed through administrative tools, or by running msinfo32.exe by typing it into the start menu search and clicking on the result. You can also type it into the run command box and click ok.

In the resulting window will be an incomplete but fairly encompassing summary of the basic system components including the operating system version, hardware platform version, processor model, BIOS version, installed physical memory, motherboard manufacturer and in some cases the motherboard model.

In the left hand panel are other specific system component categories that contain more detailed information on most every hardware and software component that makes up your system, but we'll revisit that later in the advanced system information section. For now we are only concerned with basic information and the summary contains just that.


As an alternative method for obtaining system information in a manner more likely to feel familiar to novice users, there are several third party utilities available that can provide similar basic and advanced system summaries. These utilities are all free, easy to install and will automatically gather the required information.





Belarc Advisor
A simple to use, but very detailed, web browser based system information summary report generator that provides hardware, software and security information.





CPUID Utilities
CPUID offers several well known and well respected system utilities that provide a variety of functions from system information gathering to hardware monitoring. CPU-Z, PC-Wizard and HWinfo are all highly recommended utilities that the least experienced user can manage effortlessly.



There are many other free utilities available with little more than a quick Bing or Google search. Far too many to list them all of course, but I feel it's necessary to include mention of a couple of them like GPU-Z, Speccy and WinAudit freeware. Some of these will probably provide more information about your system than the average user would ever need to know, but is nice to have available in cases where it is desirable to have that level of information.



Additionally, if very detailed and advanced information is needed beyond what is provided by the listed utilities ( Which is doubtful) or if you prefer to simply gather the information from within Windows rather than using a utility, you can easily do so.

In the Windows system information utility, msinfo32.exe, that was outlined above, you can navigate to the individual hardware resources, software environment or the components category. In most cases the components category will contain the necessary hardware component information not listed in the summary if you browse around a little bit to find what you're looking for.


Don't be afraid to look around in here and experiment, you can't hurt your system from here by simply viewing the specifications and details so there's no risk of messing anything up. There is also a search function at the bottom of the window so if you don't see what you're looking for you can try to find it using the built in feature.

Furthermore, if you just want to provide an all inclusive report of everything about your system, well, pretty much everything that matters and a whole lot of stuff that doesn't, you can go up to the "File" menu at the top and select "Save". A dialogue will open where you can name the report anything you want as well as select the destination where you want to save it. Now you can provide the most detailed of reports to anybody that might be trying to assist you with whatever issue happens to be ailing your system.​