By GURU: Dave Smith
Calling a help support technician costs time and money.
Open the System Information application before you call so the help technician
can resolve your problem accurately and efficiently.
To open the System Information tool, single-click the Start
button, mouse-over Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then single-click
System Information.
The System Information is organized into three categories:
Resources, Components, and Software Environment.
Resources displays hardware-specific settings, namely DMA, IRQs, I/O addresses, and memory addresses.
The Conflicts/Sharing view identifies devices that
are sharing resources or are in conflict. This can help identify problems with
a device.
Components displays information about your Windows
configuration. This category is used to determine the status of your device
drivers, networking, and multimedia software. In addition, there is a comprehensive
driver history, which shows changes made to your
components over time.
Software Environment displays a snapshot of the
software loaded in computer memory. This information can be used to see if a
process is still running or to check version information.
Depending on the individual topic, you may be presented with a choice of basic, advanced, or historical system data.