Systems Management content from Windows IT Pro Regardless of the number of systems you manage, you probably spend more time than you'd like digging through various system utilities and Control Panel applets, searching for a specific piece of configuration information such as computer name, IP address, logon server, or boot time. Instead, you can use Sysinternals' BGInfo, a free tool that gives you easy access to relevant system information. Besides supporting an array of built- in information fields, BGInfo can display registry values, file versions, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) query results, and more—as part of the system desktop background. You also can customize the display's foreground and background colors and fonts, and because BGInfo generates a static desktop background and then exits, the tool doesn't consume system resources. The tool runs on Windows NT 4. Windows 9. 5 and later.
The window lets you shape the text and data fields that the tool prints on the desktop. BGInfo includes support for an array of built- in fields, referenced within angle brackets (< > ) in this window's main area. For example, the default layout prints Boot Time: and the value of the built- in < Boot Time> field on the first line of the display.
How do you modify BackInfo.ini file to display product name (eg. Windows Server 2008 R2) instead of “Microsoft Windows NT version 6.1?
Regardless of the number of systems you manage, you probably spend more time than you'd like digging through various system utilities and Control Panel applets. The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools. The SQLCMD utility allows users to connect to, send Transact-SQL batches from, and output rowset information.
If you delete a field from the main area and then want to add it back, simply place the cursor in the main area in the location you want the field, select the field from the Fields list, and click Add. For fields that can contain multiple values (e. IP and MAC addresses on systems that host multiple network adapters), BGInfo creates a separate entry for each value. Simply click Custom to open the Define New Field dialog box, which Figure 2 shows.
If you have been on Microsoft training courses, you may have seen computer information displayed on the desktop. This isn’t done using the publicly available bginfo. Group Policy is of course one of the best ways you can lockdown and configure your windows systems in your environment and one of the most commonly.
BGInfo offers a variety of potential information sources, including environment variables, registry values, file version information—even the contents of a text file. To define a new field as a VBScript file, choose the VB Script file option and enter the path to the script in the Path box (or click Browse to navigate to and select the script). BGInfo will execute the script, using the output of any invocations of the Echo command that you place in the script to replace the field value. You can even use the Field function in your script to have the script reference the value of a built- in BGInfo field. In this dialog box, you can select any property of any registered WMI class to have BGInfo fill in the WMI query box with a basic query that you then can edit, if necessary.
To ensure that your query produces the results you expect, click Evaluate to test the output of your query. You can insert images by using the main window's Edit, Insert Image menu option.
The main window's Background button lets you specify the desktop background you want to apply. The Copy user's wallpaper settings option generates a bitmap based on the current desktop background, or you can override that background by selecting Use these settings and choosing a different wallpaper or background color. Regardless of which option you pick, you can have BGInfo overlay its output in an opaque text box on top of the background or show the background behind the text. Click Desktops to open the Desktops dialog box, which you can use to decide how the tool will appear on various types of desktops: the current User Desktop (the default), the Logon Desktop for Console users (i.
Winlogon screen), and the Logon Desktop for Terminal Services users. If you want to prevent BGInfo's information from appearing on a desktop, select the Do not alter this wallpaper or the Change this wallpaper to \. To store the configuration in such a file, which you then can reference by running the tool from the command line and specifying the filename, select File, Save from the Default configuration window's menu bar. The easiest way to have BGInfo refresh the desktop at user logon is to place a shortcut to the tool in the user's Startup folder, then use Task Scheduler to define the execution interval at which you want the tool to update the desktop with the most recent data.
If you're running the tool on a Terminal Server system, you can use the /all argument to have BGInfo update the desktops of all currently logged- on users. The command that Listing 1 shows has BGInfo immediately generate a desktop background according to the configuration stored in a configuration file named desktop. The /popup argument instructs BGInfo to display output in a window; including the /taskbar argument causes the tool to run in the system tray and display the text box when you double- click its icon. Or, you can select File, Database Settings from the Default configuration window's menu bar to open a dialog box in which you can direct the tool to store its data in a file or database—letting you use BGInfo as a light- weight network- inventory tool. You can download the tool and get more information about its operation at http: //technet.