Andy said:
You might want to read the links you posted.
Do you have an anger problem ??
Andy
The stuff in there, seems to have some commonality with WMI
(Windows Management Interface). This article will do you
absolutely no good
It's Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation
One thing the OS people seem to be enamored with, is
remote inventory. And some of this stuff (like
what msinfo32 provides), is inventory info. So
that could be why it's there. Reading the individual
files in that directory though, doesn't really give
any hint as to how it's wired together. It looks
like a word salad in there.
https://web.archive.org/web/2008020...osoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/wmi/default.mspx
At one time, the BIOS collected DMI, and the BIOS
actually recorded (in the BIOS flash chip), what
the current hardware inventory was. A program called
DMI Explorer, was popular for looking at that info.
I think Asus Probe had a tab for viewing DMI as well.
And a PC assembler, could record information in there.
The computer store that built my first PC, put their
store name in the DMI. As well as adhering a sticker
onto the PC casing.
WMI does the same sorts of things, but does a lot
more, and allows remote probing. Good for generating
grand inventories for the IT department. I think at
work, we even had lame attempts to do such inventorying
by hand, for things like lab equipment (scanner of bar code
stickers on equipment). Considering our buildings were
one large junk closet, that is next to impossible,
especially as the junk has legs and walks off from one
lab to another, often without anyone knowing.
For networking equipment, we have SNMP, which is a bit
more useful, as if a piece of equipment develops legs
and walks away, the loss of networking will generally
get noticed by someone. But losing a few DIMMs here and
there, I don't see what good an inventory collection
would do.
Paul