Discussion on:

Get better system information from the Help and Support Center

Haven't looked in help and support for quite a while. browsed it just now and found some good stuff that I'd forgotten was there. Thanks for the article.

In this post when you say go to Start/Help and Support to access this, can you please tell me where to find the Help and Support. Thank you and have a great day!!!

Just click on "START" and you will see "Help and Support" in the list that pops up.

Sounds like someone is using the "Classic" start menu...

Change it back to the default XP Start menu, or just minimize all your open programs so that all you see is the desktop, and then press F1.

F1 is used as the "help" key for 99% of all Windows programs, including Windows. It works many times when the Help menu doesn't work (like when a program opens another window that takes precedence over the main window where the Help menu is located).

Nice tip.

Actually, I have mine here at work with classic menu, and Help and Support does show up.
I don't know what the OP has done to their menu, but it should be there.

This is as cute as a bug in a rug! I click on
the first link, "View general system information about this computer" and a page is automagically generated.

That page shows:

- "Please wait while information is being collected"
- a status bar, which fills
- below the bar, the message
" % (collecting information)"

The text at changes as the bar fills.

When the status bar is filled, the line below the bar reads
"100% (collecting Local Disk information)"

And the "Please wait" message is replaced with this:
" 'undefined' is null or not an object "

and that's all, Folks!

But... I already knew that undefined is not an object.

[I have XP SP 3 and all since offered Windows updates.)

Dear Sir,
I have the same problem.If you solved the issue can you please forward me the solution.
Thanks in advance

My Help and Support Center looks nothing like that. HP pavilion 910n.

That's not even a real computer, is it?
(Sorry... I just had to say that. HP does not know how to make a computer.)
Dell all the way!

Bob, this should not depend that much on what computer you have but it would have more to do with what version of windows you have.

My guess is that HP has "customized" your Help and Support Center to make it more specific to your HP system. Most OEMs do that.

Most of the HP bloatware that came pre-installed can be removed without consequence. I find that most of the pre-loaded software from an OEM is useless and just takes up space or shoves advertisements in your face.

This is very helpful for a helpdesk technician to point a user to for information. Is there a way to create a shortcut to this to put on the users desktop?

You mean, like right-click dragging the Help and Support start menu icon to the desktop, releasing the button, and then choosing "copy here"?

That I can do. I was hoping for a shortcut that actually produced the computer information from the desktop without having to drill down.

Oh, my mistake. Anyway, here is the location of the "My Computer Information" link in Help and Support:

hcp://system/sysinfo/sysinfomain.htm

I dragged the link from the Help and Support menu into a new Outlook message and was able to see the path to the HTML file. Then it was just a matter of copying the path from the new email message body, right-clicking on the desktop, choosing New->Shortcut, and pasting the address into the box and naming the shortcut.

I have my disk partitioned to C: D: ... up to K: but "Find information about the hardware installed on this computer" show me C: and D: only.

Hello Tech Rep,

Most Laptops and PCs only have 1 hard drive partitioned for 2 or 3 drives(c:,d:).
Are the drive letters from E thru K network Drives??
Network Drives will not show up.

No, all partitions are on single hardisk. C: is for system and related programs, D: is for Foxpro projects, E: is for few used programs, F: is for Perl projects etc.

Are you sure some of those "drives" aren't the mappings for any card readers?
Most I've seen tend to grab about 4 mappings.
Tends to cause issues with network drives, so end up having to re-map them as admin so users get their network drives properly.

Great article - didn't know it could do so much. Thanks.

Is there a way to do this in Vista?

My device manager lists two CPUs. However, the Help & Support Center lists only one. Its a dual core (that might be the reason). But then isn't that a disconnect? Shouldn't the device manager and the Support Center generate identical results?

The quickest way to bring up the Help and Support Center (or what I tend to think of as Windows Help) is to press the Windows Logo Key plus F1. This works even if you have your Start Menu set up not to show the Help & Support link.

Todd Corson
Houston, TX

I came across this months ago on my own but completely forgot where to find it agian. Thanks for the refresh!

Incomplete and somewhat slow.

I'm not too bright so bear with me!
If the Hard Drive crashes and you can't recover Windows, are you left with re-installing Windows, then using the backup you've made?
Or is there a way of "slip-streaming" all the progs and data you had so that you can set it to restore all of this data? I realize this would be a very large file but you could put it on several DVD's and use autorun.