System Information on Desktop

I had long forgotten the BGInfo utility from sysinternals (now Microsoft) which shows the system information on the desktop. What it does is allow you to pick up items like CPU, RAM, IP information, Hostname, Disk Space, etc. and show them on the desktop. Advantage? Saves time as you have to go through number of clicks before you can collect all the information. Here is a screenshot of how the software looks like:

Download from here

Once configured with the items that you want to show on your desktop, you need to add it to run auomatically on startup. No, the program does not run in the background but creates a bitmap file which you can use as a desktop.

Now that I’ve been reminded of this nice utility, I’m going to add this to all my servers running in the office. I would not recommend using this on live servers which are connected directly to the Internet i.e. servers which can be connected directly via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Since the desktop from this software is visible even at the login box, anyone can connect to your server and pull out important information. Unless you have secured RDP to listen only from particular IP, or have setup access to servers after VPN, I strongly object the use of this software. Overall, I just love this utility and here is a snap of a desktop from one of my test servers in office.