How can I gather a useful system profile on Windows?

Question

A few of my users have problems starting up my Java application on Windows XP and 7. I cannot reproduce the bug on my systems.

On Mac, the next step would be to ask them to send their system profile to me by going to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info and then saving the system profile.

Is there an equivalent on Windows? I would love to see:

• Version numbers for the system
• Hardware configuration
• Shell paths: $HOME, $APPDATA, $LOCALAPPDATA
• Drive layout
• Programs running on startup
• Loaded drivers and DLLs
• Possible system logs

Answer 1

Whenever I'm debugging on a webserver (Windows) DebugDiag is good for memory/dll issues. You can load the crash dumps right into WinDBG.

For the system information, you will probably have to write your own script to collect this. WMI should let you collect the remainder of the system settings.

Answer 2

Here are a couple of possibilities that get part way there. The PsTools suite from SysInternals has a number of command line utilities that might be useful for this. In particular psinfo (system information) and pslist (running processes). Also, Process Explorer could be useful too since it has an option to save information to a file.

Answer 3

The built-in "System Information" tool in Windows provides most of what you want, and a lot of other useful information. No System logs though.

Have your users run "MSINFO32" from the start menu. Then File -> Export if you want a text output, or File -> Save... if you want a file that you can open with MSINFO32 on your end.