BGInfo system utility

This free utility displays system information about Windows machines to help you track down problems

If you sit down in front of a machine on your network that has a problem, your first step is probably to gather a whole range of information about the machine - the name, the IP address, processor, how much memory is installed, and on, and on.

Few users know this sort of thing - that's the job of the IT department, so you waste the first half an hour looking for all the data you need. 

BGInfo is a free utility from the Microsoft TechNet Sysinternals group that can give you pretty much all the relevent information you need. BGInfo queries a Windows machine for information on its hardware, operating system software, service packs, and network information such as the IP address, domain name and MAC address. The data is then displayed on the desktop as part of the background.

You can run BGInfo on a machine without installing it by simply double-clicking on the .exe file, so you don't have to waste time on installation, all you have to do is to optionally select which items of system data to display. If you just accept the defaults, BGInfo shows 24 items of data. If necessary, you can add your own custom data items based on environment variables, registry values, and the output from VBScript and WMI queries.

You do have the option of including BGInfo in login scripts, and having the data collected and exported to an external file such as a spreadsheet or database. You can download BGInfo here.