Basic Hardware Inventory

Version 5.50

 

Use this HTA to get a basic hardware inventory of any WMI enabled computer on the network.
Usage:
Open the Basic Hardware Inventory tool by double clicking the file hardware.hta.
Fill in the name or IP address of a remote computer in the "Computer" field at the top of the screen. Or you can use the "Paste" button at the left of this field to paste the computer name from the clipboard. Or just leave the "Computer" field empty to use the default: the local computer.
If you only want a limited inventory, deselect the components you want to skip by deselecting the appropriate checkboxes at the left. Or use the "Basic" button at the top, which toggles between a basic (CPUs, memory and harddisks) and full inventory.
Click the "Go" button next to the "Computer" field to start the inventory. This may take a couple of seconds or sometimes even minutes.
When the results are displayed, you can use the "Copy" button at the bottom to copy them to the clipboard, or the "Save" button to save them to a file, or the "Print" button to open a print preview of the results. "Save" by default writes the results to a file named "Hardware.csv" in the current working directory. To use a different path, or to prompt for a file name, use command line switch /SAVE (view Help screen for details). Exported results are in tab delimited format.
By clicking the "Settings" button, the HTA's configuration file "Hardware.cfg" will be opened in Notepad. This configuration file should contain a single line with command line switches. Click the "Help" button or press "F1" to list all available options.
Use any of the "Details" buttons to display more details for the selected hardware category. If the /DXDIAG command line switch was used (for the local computer only), besides WMI data, DxDiag data will be displayed too for CPU, memory, harddisks, CDROMs, video, sound, ports and BIOS.
Hover your mouse pointer over any field or button to display a short help text in a tooltip.
Click the "Reset" button at the top to clear the results and start a new inventory.
For help on command line options, press F1 or click the "Help" button at the bottom.
To view the credits, click the "Credits" button at the bottom.

 

Known Issues

• Harddisk/CDROM interface: SATA type disks may be listed incorrectly as SCSI when the disk is connected to a RAID enabled controller.
• Video resolution: in case of multiple monitors with different screen resolutions, connected to a single video adapter, and configured as extended desktop, only one of the screen resolutions will be listed. Rumour has it there are other (combinations of) conditions causing incorrect results too.
  The solution (inspired by Gary Johnson) is to use DirectX instead of WMI. Unfortunately, this is not only slow, it can be used for the local computer only. If the specified computer name does not match the local computer name, the /DXDIAG command line switch and all its dependent switches will be ignored.
• Fast switching between Internet Explorer based screens (Help, Credits and Details) may cause a script error, because the Internet Explorer object cannot reopen while still shutting down. For now, just ignore the error and try again after a couple of seconds.
• Print and Print preview: at each page break, the first property name is garbled. The value will be printed correctly. This may depend on the Internet Explorer version, this has been tested with IE9 in Windows 7 only.
• WMI: Basic Hardware Inventory uses WMI to get information on all hardware installed. WMI gets its hardware information from the hardware drivers. Sometimes these drivers may provide incorrect information (e.g. SCSI instead of SATA for drives connected to a RAID enabled controller). This is not a bug in Basic Hardware Inventory; any WMI based inventory will display the same incorrect results.

 

Change History

Version	Release Date (yyyy-mm-dd)	Changes
5.50	2012-12-20	Added an HTML document type and fixed some incorrect CSS to make the HTA display correctly in Windows 8.
5.49	2012-01-13	Fixed another bug with the Hardware.cfg configuration file: a 0 byte file (or no read access to the file) would still sometimes generate an error message (bug reported by Steve Robertson). As of now, if a 0 byte configuration file is saved, it will be deleted immediately.
5.48	2012-01-09	Fixed another bug with /Print and IE9: the print window must be visible for a couple of seconds to allow IE to send the data to the printer.
5.47	2012-01-09	Fixed a bug with the Hardware.cfg configuration file: a 0 byte file would crash the HTA (bug reported by Steve Robertson). Fixed a bug with Print and IE9: IE9 suddenly refused to show a print preview if the IE object was invisible.
5.46	2012-01-05	Added a "Print" button and /PRINT command line switch. When the "Inventory" button is clicked, all deselected components (rows) will be hidden from view.
5.45	2011-10-13	Added physical monitor dimensions (requires Windows Vista or later). Added the /CM command line switch to display physical monitor dimensions as width x height cm instead of diagonal in inches.
5.44	2011-09-25	If the /DXDIAG command line switch is used on the local computer, DxDiag data will now be displayed, besides WMI data, in most Details windows.
5.43	2011-09-18	Fixed errors occurring when switching between Help and Credits. Fixed missing and incorrect Help and Credits window titles. Fixed Help and Credits windows' focus. Prevented multiple instances of the Help and Credits windows to be opened.
5.42	2011-09-17	Added support for USB harddisks (command line switch /USBSTOR). Added command line switches /DXDIAG, /KeepXML and /XML. These switches allow you to use DxDiag.exe to query DirectX data instead of WMI for video memory and screen resolution. The details window for the video controllers will contain DirectX as well as WMI data if /DXDIAG is used. The DirectX query may take a minute or more, unless the /KeepXML switch is used (then it takes that long only the first time the HTA is run). Added a "Save" button and /SAVE command line switch to save the results in tab delimited format to a file. Moved the help text to an Internet Explorer window, as the amount of text now exceeds the limit for MsgBox dialogs. Added some extra error handling and error messages, to allow debugging. Rearranged some of the buttons.
5.41	2011-07-29	USB field now distinguishes between USB 2.0 (or older) and 3.0. System Slots field now distinguishes between PCI and PCI Express. Improved SATA detection (though still far from perfect). Added Details button for monitors (won't show any useful information in Windows 2000). Inventory now uses a PING before trying to connect to the specified computer, thus significantly decreasing the delay in case the computer is not online or does not exist. Details windows now show namespaces as well as class names. Details windows now show number of instances found for each class. Details windows now correctly display properties of type Array. Fixed some bugs in the interface (focus).
5.40	2011-07-10	The HTA is much faster. With the new "Basic" button you can easily toggle between a basic (CPUs, memory and harddisks) and full inventory. Clicking the new "Help" button opens the Command Line Help window, just like pressing F1 does. The credits were moved to a separate screen. Clicking the new "Credits" button opens the Credits window. The delay times between inventories of components have been removed again. The optimized code doesn't leave the HTA unresponsive for a long time, so the delays became obsolete. The /NODELAYS command line switch has been removed too. Only one single delay remains, between pressing the "Go" button and actually starting the inventory; the delay allows the HTA to immediately disable its checkboxes and buttons.
5.30	2011-07-05	A check for the Internet Explorer has been added, so the HTA now correctly displays multiple harddisks, CDROMs, network or video adapters in IE7 too. The delay times between inventories of components have been corrected (these delays allow the HTA to update its GUI with intermediate results). The new command line switch /NODELAYS will skip those delays (at the risk that impatient users may invalidate the results by clicking because the HTA does not seem to respond). The two rightmost colums became wider, so the minimum required screen width is now 1024 pixels.
5.21	2011-06-25	Two minor bugs in the interface were fixed.
5.20	2011-06-19	Added command line switches /BASIC (select CPU, memory and HDD only), /COMPUTER:name (specify computer to be queried, starts inventory immediately), and /COPY (copy the results to the clipboard and terminate the program). The command HARDWARE.HTA /COMPUTER:MYPC /COPY /NOUPDCHK will copy the inventory results of computer MYPC to the clipboard. The command HARDWARE.HTA /COMPUTER: /BASIC /COPY /NOUPDCHK will copy the very basic inventory results of the local computer to the clipboard.
5.10	2011-06-16	Now differentiates between IDE and SATA interfaces for harddisks and CDROM drives.
5.00	2011-06-15	Rewrote the code for multiple instances of components (HDD, CDROM, and video and network adapters). Added on screen help (press F1). Added several command line switches (pressing F1 will list them all). Now displays intermediate results while the inventory is running. Can now handle up to 8 harddisks, and up to 4 CDROMs, video cards and/or networ adapters.
4.21	2011-01-12	Fixed a problem with Win32_NetworkAdapter's "PhysicalAdapter" property (which isn't supported in Windows XP).
4.20	2010-09-26	Improved filtering in case of multiple monitors. Improved filtering of network adapters (now displays active physical ethernet adapters only).
4.10	2007-02-15	Added monitors to the inventory.
4.00	2006-11-11	Added sound cards to the inventory, plus support for multiple video and network adapters. Removed commas from CSV file to enable more reliable import in spreadsheets.
3.02	2006-01-15	No change log was kept before this version.

 

Download Basic Hardware Inventory 5.50:

 

Checksums: File name: MD5: SHA1:

hardwinv.zip bd28c712822b0e9c894ca860a691e15f 05ea2b51638894df079a42bfd54a38354afa9845

 

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