How does one go about finding out information about their computer? Every now and then, questions arise, either from technical support, friends, or yourself, regarding your computer’s hardware.
Perhaps you are shopping around for upgrades or a new computer, or are on the phone with a computer support representative. In any event, this type of data is always handy to have.
Granted, the individual may have retained all the original documentation from when the purchased their computer. This is a good habit to have with any type of electronic device, not just computers. However, there are many people who do not have this paper work.
When it comes to finding out what hardware is specifically on your Windows computer, there are numerous programs that will display the details. One piece of software called hwINFO32 (found here) can quickly scan your computer and return a wealth of data in a not too difficult to read format. As a nice touch, this software does not have to be installed on your computer.
When you run hwINFO32, the first display that will appear is the summary results of your computer’s scan. The information on the summary screen will suffice for most people when it comes to questions about their hardware. It contains the data for the processor, memory, hard drives, video card type, and operating system. The first section on the left hand side shows the information for the processor.
Here we see that the processor in question is a Intel Pentium 4 – 3000. Quickly translated, this is a 3GHz processor. You can also look at the Clock column in the CPU list to view the clock speed (3000.0 MHz). Also note that this is a single core processor, as denoted by the number next to the Cores entry. Should your computer be dual core (2) or quad core (4), those numbers will change respectively.
Looking towards the right hand side of the summary, you will see data on your video card (this can be a separate video card or integrated graphics with shared memory). In this example, we have a nVIDIA brand GeForce2 MX400 video card.
Knowing the brand and model is useful, but pay attention to the amount of memory and the circled item in the middle. The area showing AGP 4X is listing the video card connection type. Newer video cards are PCI Express.
Older video cards are AGP 8X or 4X. This computer can take either an AGP 4X card or AGP 8X. Computers are typically constructed with either an AGP card slot or PCI Express slot for video cards.
The amount of a video card’s memory, here it is 32 MB (megabytes), is important. This will determine what type of applications can be run well, or poorly, on your computer.
A computer game or graphics program recommending a minimum of 64 MB of video card memory may work on this computer, but not without a noticeable drop in performance. The software may take longer to start, react very slowly, or freeze up entirely.
Moving towards the lower section of the right hand side, we encounter data about the computer’s memory (RAM). In the area just below the word Memory, you will notice an entry for Size.
In this case it the Size is 1536 MB, or 1.5 GB (gigabytes). Any time you are looking for new software, hardware, or upgrading Windows, among other things, memory plays a crucial role in determining if you can operate a new piece of hardware, or run other software.
If a new video card asks for 128 MB of RAM memory, this computer should be able to handle it without an issue, with respect to the computer’s amount of memory.
Should you need to know what operating system you are running, simply look at the lower are below the memory information. Here we see that this computer is running Microsoft Windows XP Professional. The Build number is also present should someone like a technical support person require this data.
Turning our attention back to the lower left hand corner of the summary page, you will find information on what hard drives and disc drives are currently setup on your computer. If you look at the brackets at the end of the first two entries, you will note the 80 GB and 160 GB text.
Both of these are hard drives on this computer. One drive is 80 GB in size and the other is 160 GB. Below the hard drives are the disc drives. The first one is a CD Writer drive (can read and burn CDs); the second drive is a DVD Writer drive (can read and burn DVDs).
Diving further into hwINFO32, and moving past the Summary screen, you will find yourself on the main screen. Here you can see the several entries on the left hand side with plus signs next to them. From here you can drill down into greater detail about your computer if you need to.
In these screens, you will see familiar information. Notice that the processor clock speed, as shown previously, is here as well. As an additional example, we will look at the memory stemming from the main screen entries. Again, we see the same data as before with regard to the computer’s RAM memory amount.
One could easily spend an hour or so sifting through the main screen of hwINFO32. If you would rather have a summarization of the findings, you can, from the main screen, click on Report, then Create, and choose an format to your liking. Pick what hardware you want the report to include. This will create a file copy of the selected hardware for your reference.
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