Free Handy Tech Tool For Your Toolbox

For those Techies among us, we have all been there and done that. You know the drill. You go to a new clients home or business and begin asking some simple, or what you think are simple questions. Like, ‘how much memory does this system have?”. The client replies ‘40 gigabytes’, referring to the hard disk size instead. Your next question was going to be what is the IP address of the system, but because of the previous response, you already know you will get the deer in the headlight look.

Well Microsoft has provided a free handy tool that will display 24 of the most common separate pieces of information you may need. You can also add to or delete which information you want. The tool is called BgInfo V4.10 and is available for a free download. The software displays the information right on top of the desktop and is a standalone application so there is no need to install anything.

At the Microsoft Technet site they state:

How many times have you walked up to a system in your office and needed to click through several diagnostic windows to remind yourself of important aspects of its configuration, such as its name, IP address, or operating system version If you manage multiple computers you probably need BGInfo. It automatically displays relevant information about a Windows computer on the desktop’s background, such as the computer name, IP address, service pack version, and more. You can edit any field as well as the font and background colors, and can place it in your startup folder so that it runs every boot, or even configure it to display as the background for the logon screen.

Because BGInfo simply writes a new desktop bitmap and exits you don’t have to worry about it consuming system resources or interfering with other applications.

BGInfo works on 95 and higher, and Windows NT 4.0 and higher.

Give it a try and see what you think.
Download BgInfo v4.10 from here.

Quick note: to turn off the BgInfo image right click on the desktop, select properties, than desktop tab, and choose an image other than bg.info. Hope this helps. There is also a forum for additional information.

Comments welcome.

[tags]microsoft, technet, tool, free, download, [/tags]