Even a novice user should know where the computer information is. The need to view it may appear when a system malfunctions, when an attempt is made to update the driver, or in the event of a system upgrade. Among other things, in order to receive a qualified, complete and professional response from any service department, you may also need to quickly find out which version of Windows is installed on your computer, at what frequency the central processor works, what is the size of the hard disk or RAM capacity.
Several ways
System information about the computer can be obtained at boot time BIOS. After turning on, you need to press the Break / Pause key. All basic information is displayed here. If necessary, they can simply be written on a piece of paper. PC booting will continue after pressing the Esc or Enter button.
In the pivot table, which is built on the monitor screen during BIOS boot, the following information can be obtained:
- The clock speed of the processor, its cache size, identifier (ID) and type.
- The generation and amount of RAM. Information about which slots it is installed in.
- Type and code name of the video adapter.
- Volume and model of hard drive, DVD-drive and other drives.
Computer information provided by the operating system
Open the main menu and right-click on the "My Computer" icon. In the menu that opens, select "Properties." A window with several tabs appears. The General tab will show: the version of Windows, the name of the processor, the frequency at which it runs, the total amount of installed RAM (RAM).
You can also get to this window through the control panel. Open the "Start" menu and select "Control Panel" in it. In its list, click on the inscription "Performance and maintenance."
Information about the computer shown on the screen using this method does not make it possible to write it to an external file. You can use an undocumented method to save this data (as a picture). First, click on the Print Screen / Sys Rq button to write the screen image to the clipboard. Then open any graphic editor, for example, Paint, and press Shift + Insert on the keyboard. After that, open the "File" menu and select "Save."
Installed Devices
Sometimes information about a computer is needed along with a listing of installed devices in order to understand which ones are functioning correctly and which operating systems they donโt see at all. In this case, it makes sense to pay attention to the inscription "Device Manager" in the computer properties window .
By clicking on this link, you can get complete information about the "iron" components of the PC. This is a very useful tool that allows you to diagnose faults or just see if all the necessary drivers are installed. Devices in the manager are sorted into groups. For example, the video card will be in the "Video Adapters" group, and the hard drive will be in the "Disk Devices".
By opening the properties of any component, you can get comprehensive information about it, update the driver, or completely remove it from the system so that the OS considers that it is not connected.
Msinfo32.exe
Viewing information about a computer can be done using the Msinfo32.exe utility present in the Windows distribution. Follow the path "Start" - "Run", enter Msinfo32 and click OK.
Msinfo32 most closely describes hardware and software settings. It allows not only viewing comprehensive information, but also identifying hardware conflicts, generating a report on software incompatibilities and errors that occurred during operation.
AIDA64
Information about the computer can be obtained using special programs that are not included with Windows. There is no shortage of them on the Internet, but the most popular such application is AIDA64. It displays the most detailed information about hardware, programs, OS, and connected devices.
Monitoring
It happens that you need dynamically changing information about the computer. Windows 7 can only display data provided by drivers and BIOS. If you want to view the voltage, temperature of various devices, the speed at which the fans rotate, you can also use AIDA64.
In addition to viewing graphs and values, the program allows you to write data to a log or export to another application, which makes it possible to view research results over time. Also, if some values โโexceed the permissible ones, the program will automatically give a signal to the sound device and write about it on the monitor screen.
CPU-Z
CPU-Z is an application that is considered one of the most necessary for the system administrator. It can display all the basic information about the computer. Windows 7, 8, XP, Vista - no matter what version you have installed, the program is suitable for anyone.
The CPU-Z interface consists of six tabs:
- Processor
- Cache
- Mainboard
- Memory
- SPD
- Graphics.
In the tab "Processor", as you might guess, information about the CPU is displayed. Here are displayed: model, code name, technological process (in nanometers), voltage supplied to the device. The "Cache" tab continues the information on the processor, here data on the CPU cache memory of all levels are displayed.
The tab with data on the motherboard shows the following characteristics: device model and model of the chipset, manufacturer and BIOS version, detailed information about the north and south bridges.
Tabs Memory and SPD will talk about RAM. They will tell you such criteria as: its volume, the number of free and busy slots, timings, frequency, generation, whether the two-channel mode is on.
Graphics will show all the data on the video card. In addition to the standard amount of video memory, the processor frequency, memory frequency, memory bus bandwidth, number of cores will be indicated.