Description of the Microsoft Hardware Diagnostic Tool

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This article was previously published under Q185956

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SUMMARY

This article describes the Microsoft Hardware Diagnostic tool (Hwinfo.exe).

NOTE: This article discusses an unsupported tool (Hwinfo.exe). Microsoft Technical Support does not support this tool and provides this article for informational purposes only. Use this tool at your own risk.

MORE INFORMATION

Hardware Diagnostic provides a different view of the same information the Microsoft System Information tool reports.

For information about how to use the Microsoft System Information tool in Windows 98, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID : 184075 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184075/EN-US/ )
TITLE : Description of Microsoft System Information (Msinfo32.exe) Tool

Hardware Diagnostic provides color-coded information to identify values or issues with hardware devices or software. The following color key is used in Hardware Diagnostic:

   Green     - All keys from the registry
   Pink      - File attributes information
   Dark Red  - Configuration Manager information
   Bold Red  - Error information
   Bold Blue - Warning information

You may want to use the View menu to change how Hardware Diagnostic reports its information. You can choose from the following view options:

All devices (default)
Current devices
Devices with problems
File verify
Resource summary

You can also use the Filter menu to filter out different device class information.

To start Hardware Diagnostic, click Start, click Run, type hwinfo /ui in the Open box, and then click OK.