I saw a short post about freeware program called System Information Viewer (SIV) and thought I’d see what it was all about. SIV is available through their website siv.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/ and is a relatively small download, at just under 1MB. Unzipped it’s a bit over 2MB. It supports all versions of Windows starting with ‘95. There’s no installer, just double-click and run.

So what is SIV? The website describes it as “…a general Windows utility for displaying lots of useful Windows, Network and hardware info - CPU info, PCI info, PCMCIA info, USB info, Machine Info, Hardware Sensors, Networked computers, Operating System Information and more.”. They aren’t kidding. I started it up and was amazed at the amount of information available about the hardware and software I’m running. Beyond telling me the temperature of my CPU, or the specs of my motherboard, it even has has handy shortcuts to get to Windows management tools. Here’s just a few screen shots of the info I could get on my computer:

If you minimize the initial window that opens, you’re left with just an icon in your task bar. Right-click that icon and you are presented with all of the same options that were available from the initial window, and more. Each menu item expands into a dozen or more options.

It would take quite a while just to sort through all of the options available. I see tools for automated logging, accessing your control panel, even ways to ‘tune’ your settings from inside SIV. So, if you want to learn a bit more about what’s in your PC, as well as simplify how you manage your machine, give SIV a try. It’s free, so you’ve got nothing to lose.