Today’s ToolTip is about HWiNFO32 which is a hardware information and diagnostic tool. I have seen many tools that can collect hardware information but this one gives me an impression of being a well organized utility and most important it’s FREE.
I recommend that you download the portable ZIP file as that doesn’t require an install.
Beside collecting detailed hardware information, HWiNFO32 also includes a Benchmark feature that compares the current system components against other components. The below screenshot shows the ranking of one of our home notebooks.
All collected information can be exported in various formats like XML, HTML, CSV, MHTML, Text log file or as short report. HWiNFO32 can be downloaded from here
Windows Virtual PC requires that your hardware supports hardware-assisted virtualization. There are a number of third party utilities around already, but now Microsoft released one as well. It’s called the Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool and can be downloaded from here
If you launch the tool manually it will tell you if your system meets the requirements for running Windows Virtual PC or not, quite similar as the Securable utility I wrote about in the Detect XP Mode Support article.
But since I usually work in enterprise environments, I’m more interested in command line automation than in visual user interfaces, so let’s see what we have here.
When downloading the tool you get the havdetectiontool.exe, which is a self extracting executable. So the next step is to extract the content which we do by running the havdetectiontool.exe /x command which will prompt you for a location where to store the content. Once extracted you will see a havtoollauncher.exe and a subdirectory called Sources that contains the havtool executables for both 32 and 64 bit clients.
I was not able to find any command line options for the havtoollauncher.exe itself, so i moved on the to the 32 bit version of the havtool.exe. And yes, indeed the tool does provide command line options, Hura!
Executing the following command will parse the output into a log file:
havtool /log havresult.txt /q
Content of havresult.txt
System CPU doesn’t support Hardware Assisted Virtualization. BIOS Vendor : Hewlett-Packard BIOS Version : F.22 System Manufacturer : Hewlett-Packard Final returnValue = 1
Executing the following commands will set the result into the Errorlevel variable and then create a new System Variable called HAV and sets its value with the Return code.
havtool /q SETX /M HAV %ERRORLEVEL%
Setting a system variable is just one example, you could also write a custom registry key or log file. Once you have marked your system with the result, you can use your system management software such as SCCM 2007 to collect the data and create your custom reporting.
When setting up a Virtual Machine in Windows Virtual PC, You will see the following progress window when the VM is started. This indicates that the VM is running in Enhanced Mode which is the default. To better understand the different modes of Windows Virtual PC I recommend reading the “Three Modes of Windows XP Mode” article.
The progress windows is being displayed until the OS running in the VM has started up, so you have no chance to interrupt the boot process to access the BIOS. To get access to the VM BIOS, you must run the VM in Basic Mode. Running a VM in Basic Mode means that you must disable the integration features.
The Integration Features can be disabled within the Virtual Machine settings. In a running VM, select the Tools Menu, then Settings, or if you haven’t started the VM yet, select the VM in the Virtual Machine Explorer and select Settings at the right mouse click context menu.
Select the Integration Features option and unselect “Enable at Startup”.
The next time you start the VM, you will see the boot window instead of the progress window.
Now press the “DELETE” key during the VM boot process to get access to the VM’s BIOS settings.
For those of you who do have vPro capable machines in their environment, but never had the chance to take a closer look at the AMT features, this blog post might be of interest.
For most people I assume the biggest hurdle to start using the AMT technology is that you need a System Management Infrastructure setup that provides AMT support like Microsoft SCCM, Altiris Client Management Suite, Intel Landesk or the HP System Configuration Management Suite. If you really plan to use the AMT technology , this of course is a prerequisite, but if you just want to explore the basic functionality of AMT there is an easier path.
From the Intel website you can download the Manageability Developer Tool Kitthat is provided by Intel for 3rd party software developers that want to integrate Intel vPro support into their products.
Part of the Manageability Developer Tool Kit is the Manageability Commander Tool. It is exactly this tool that can give you that first real world experience you are after to see AMT in action.
Gather PC hardware inventory data
Remote BIOS administration
Remote Reboot to a redirected DVD
Remotely power up and power down a machine
To start with the first AMT experience you need the following:
Both clients must be connected to the network
The client you want to manage must be vPro enabled
Configure the vPro machine to run in SMB mode, for more details on how to configure the AMT options, refer to your hardware vendor provided configuration manual. On HP business desktops, you would boot the client and then press Alt+P to load the vPro configuration menu..
On the second PC that runs Windows XP or Vista you install the Intel Manageability Developer Tool Kit.
Launch the Manageability Commander Tool and add your vPro client to the console as shown in the picture below.
Connect to the device by clicking on the Connect button.
Once connected you can start using some AMT functionality that is provided through the console.
Go to the “Remote Control” tab and select take control. The Manageability Terminal tool window will open as shown in the picture below
Then click for example on Remote Reboot to BIOS setup, then after a while you should see the system BIOS configuration screen appearing.
For the rest I suggest, just navigate through the tool and try out the other features yourself, For more demos do a search on Youtube, there are plenty of feature demo videos around vPro and AMT there such as the video below.
Ever wondered what actually happens when you turn on your PC before it loads the operating system ? Watch this video with Jamie Schwartz, Development Lead, Windows Kernel Dev team, and Andrew Ritz, Development Manager, Windows Kernel Dev team.
When remotely accessing the system BIOS of a HP Compaq dc7800 desktop machine using vPro, the BIOS appears in black and white as shown in the picture below:
to get the native BIOS colors you must configure the terminal emulator mode to ANSI
then, the BIOS will appear with colors as if you were sitting in front of the physical machine.
Today the following options exist to automate BIOS configuration for HP clients:The Client Management Interface allows you to use WSH to retrieve and set BIOS settings like in the example below which changes the Ownership Tag.
Const wbemFlagReturnImmediately = 16
Const wbemFlagForwardOnly = 32
lFlags = wbemFlagReturnImmediately + wbemFlagForwardOnly
strService = “winmgmts:{impersonationlevel=impersonate}//”
strComputer = “.”
strNamespace = “/root/HP/InstrumentedBIOS”
strQuery = “select * from HP_BIOSSettingInterface”
Set objWMIService = GetObject(strService & _
strComputer & strNamespace)
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(strQuery,,lFlags)
‘ “Enter Ownership Tag” is the name of the BIOS setting
‘ instance object that we want to update. The correct
‘ names of available settings are found by enumerating
‘ all instances of HP_BIOSSetting.
For each objItem in colItems
objItem.SetBiosSetting oReturn, _
“Enter Ownership Tag”, _
“Some environment-specific inventory code“, _
“1E302E020304"
Next
Dim strReturn
Select Case oReturn
Case 0 strReturn = "Success"
Case 1 strReturn = "Not Supported"
Case 2 strReturn = "Unspecified Error"
Case 3 strReturn = "Timeout"
Case 4 strReturn = "Failed"
18
Case 5 strReturn = "Invalid Parameter"
Case 6 strReturn = "Access Denied"
Case Else strReturn = "..."
End Select
WScript.Echo "SetBiosSetting()
The other option is to use the biosconfigutility.exe which comes with the HP System Software Manager. The example below changes the BIOS setting for WLAN switching:
BiosConfigUtility.exe /setconfig:wlan.txt
(wlan.txt content) English LAN/WLAN Switching Disable *Enable
Beside collecting detailed hardware information, HWiNFO32 also includes a Benchmark feature that compares the current system components against other components. The below screenshot shows the ranking of one of our home notebooks. 
