by Enigmatic

Created on: September 07, 2009

Accessing your system information is a tool offered by Windows XP to view your system's specs. It helps measure the power of your computer in terms of how fast it is, how much work it can do and how up-to-date it is. It also helps you know which brand your computer's parts are from so it's possible to receive support for it. Lastly, the system information feature of Windows XP allows great customization for the several different pieces of hardware, ranging from the input devices like the mouse and keyboard to the video card and sound card.

You can access your system information in a variety of ways. The first method is to go to your desktop, then right-click My Computer. A window will pop up that will give a brief summary of your system specs on the bottom right. For some people this information is enough, but if you want to go more in-depth, you have to switch to the Hardware tab on the top. Click on the Device Manager, which should open up a new window.

This shows a complete list of the hardware that's installed on the computer. You are given a wide range of options for each piece of hardware which allows you to uninstall or remove it, or update it if the manufacturer has a new version on their website. The list of notable hardware also consists of: Disk drives, display adapters, DVD/CD-rom drives, keyboards, mice and other pointing devices, monitors, network adapters, ports, processors and system resources.

It is also possible to view the DVD/CD-rom system information. You can do this by double left-clicking on My Computer, then right-clicking Local Disk (C:) under Hard Disk Drives. Click on Properties on the drop-down menu, then switch to the Hardware tab at the top. This will allow you to troubleshoot your DVD/CD-roms, enable/disable them and even locate where the rom is physically in the computer's tower.

The second method of finding your system information is to use the Control Panel. You can do this by clicking Start at the bottom left of the desktop, and on the right half of the ascending menu will be the Control Panel icon which you can left-click to bring it up. This provides much more utility than the first method, with the option to change things like how fast you need to double-click something, or invert the left- and right-click buttons on your mouse. There's a very wide variety of options that you can tweak around to suit your own personal preferences.

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