System Reporting Tools
Following are some third-party tools that you can use to learn more about your system.
SiSoftware Sandra Lite
For a number of years, SiSoftware Sandra (System Analyzer, Diagnostics, and Reporting Assistant) has been one of the most popular system reporting tools. It offers both hardware and software reporting functions, and is available in a variety of versions from the SiSoftware Zone website. For this article, we used the freeware SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2010 SP2 version (also know as 16.52). See Figure 4.
Figure 4 The Home tab of SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2010 SP2.
Belarc Advisor
Belarc Advisor (see Figure 5) is a system analysis program that’s free for personal use. It provides a wide range of information about both hardware and software, including security updates for Windows.
Figure 5 A portion of a Belarc Advisor report.
Crucial.com Memory Advisor
The Crucial.com Memory Advisor (Figure 6) is a web-based memory analysis program available from the Crucial.com website. Use it to determine memory upgrade options for your computer. If the advisor is unable to successfully scan your computer, Crucial (and most other memory vendors) provide memory upgrade information you can search manually.
Figure 6 A portion of a Crucial.com Memory Advisor report.