NirSoft has announced the release of SimpleWMIView 1.0, a compact portable tool which uses Windows Management Instrumentation to uncover a vast amount of information about your PC.

If you’re familiar with WMI query generators then you’ll have no problems here. Choose your target computer, namespace, query and query type (synchronous/ asynchronous) and the results are displayed in the usual NirSoft table.

If you’re not used WMI before then sensible defaults make it easy to get started. Leave WMI Namespace set to its default (\root\CIMV2), make sure “WMI Class/ Query” is set to Win32_Process, click “Update”, and in a fraction of a second you’ll be reading a vast amount of detail on each of your running processes.

Explore a vast amount of system information, then save it as an HTML report

Taking this further is just a matter of choosing a new query from the list and clicking Update. Some queries are obscure, but others are more straightforward: you’ll have no problem guessing what Win32_DiskDrive, Win32_NetworkAdapter, Win32_UserAccount, Win32_Printer will reveal.

You can of course view similar data just by launching the correct Windows applet, but SimpleWMIView typically provides much more detail, optionally for network computers as well as your own, and it can save the results as a simple HTML report (right-click the table and choose the function you need).

SimpleWMIView 1.0 is a freeware WMI browser for Windows XP and later, both 32 and 64-bit editions.