Windows Computer Profiler

Question

We create a lot of internal tools in order to work with the data we use. Occasionally we'll run into a problem with one of those tools on a designer or artists computer and will need to spend considerable time on there computer to try and diagnose where the problem may be coming from.

This creates problems because while a programmer is trying to diagnose an issue on the user's computer the user is unable to continue with their work. What we'd like to be able to do instead is run an app that will generate a report that a programmer can look at on their own machine in order to at least rule out some of the more common and obvious problems.

Example information we'd need would be all the environment variables, registry info and installed applications. Is there a decent existing tool that will accomplish this or would it be better to just roll our own?

Answer 1

This probably should be on ServerFault.com, since it deals with an end user's configuration and is not necessarily a programming issue.

That said, I would think that you should be able to write a WMI script to cover this.

You'd want to start here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394585(VS.85).aspx

Answer 2

Using Windows Powershell setting up a script that can provide the needed information should be relatively easy. The script center is a great starting place to learn Powershell. If you like to listen to podcasts I would recommend The Powerscripting podcast.

Answer 3

Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information

or

Start > Run "msinfo32"

Then,

File > Export

and you can take the file back to your desk.