Ever needed to get detailed information about your PC but felt too lazy to look around for the specifications? Well, don’t bother yourself browsing the net or leafing through your PC’s instruction manual; set up a system analysis application like Belarc Advisor instead. This program will profile your PC, giving you thorough information on every aspect of your machine.

Installing the application only takes a few seconds and it will analyze your PC right away. Make sure you are connected to Internet, as Belarc Advisor only works inside a browser window. It displays not only your hardware specs like controllers, bus adapters or the capacity of your processor but also software versions and licenses. Belarc Advisor also provides you with a list of all missing and installed Microsoft 'hotfixes' with a direct link to the corresponding update page.

Belarc Advisor also carries out a CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmark of your PC according to elements such as event log policies, security options and users rights. For each category, Belarc will give you a grade out of 10, with elements you comply with given a green check and those you fail given a red cross. If you click on a particular element you will be taken to a suggestions page. For example, click on “password age” and a new tab will open up with information on how and why to change your password regularly. We recommend looking over Belarc Advisor’s suggestions for any element in the benchmark that your PC might have failed. Try implementing their tips and do the benchmark test again to see if your PC gets a better score.

While the amount of information can easily overwhelm new users, Belarc Advisor is an excellent and speedy solution to get detailed specs on your PC. Providing details on your hardware and software and featuring a thorough benchmarking test, Belarc Advisor should come in handy when upgrading your PC or looking for any vulnerability to patch.

Download Belarc Advisor 7.2.24.6 in Softonic

A system analyzer is often overlooked as the toy of PC modding fanatics, but the reality is that these applications are very effective at dissecting your PC and giving you the hard truth about its performance. PC Wizard aims to explore the insides of your system and give you the complete low down on its strengths and weaknesses.

Once you launch PC Wizard you’ll notice it takes some time to detect all the hardware installed on your PC. Use the left side of the interface to navigate through the different categories. PC Wizard reveals all the basic details of your hardware, like ports, drivers and processors, but you’ll soon realize there’s much more to it, like analyzing system files or investigating the configuration of elements such as your Internet connection or your Control Panel. Over-sized icons make it fairly obvious what you can inspect, however we would have appreciated an explorer type window to navigate through components and select exactly what to analyze.

The core of any self-respecting system analyzer is the benchmarking tool and that is where PC Wizard excels. The application lets you inspect everything from processors to cache, RAM and multimedia like DirectX, MP3 compression and video. Benchmarks provide the results as a list of information or via comprehensible graphs. These will show you straight away where you’re PC stands and the “compare with” button will let you measure your processor up against well known models. We have to warn beginners though that the information is fairly technical and will be more relevant to experienced users. Just for fun, test out the video benchmark to obtain a swarm of multicoloured balls and lines all over your screen.

That’s the only bit of excitement you’ll get with this application though. PC Wizard is not here for fun it's here to be effective. The detailed information and thorough benchmarking tests give you reliable data on all the characteristics and components of your PC. The complexity of this type of application means beginners are best kept away from it altogether, however advanced users will revel in the wealth of knowledge it will uncover on their PC’s performances.

Download PC Wizard 2008 1.85 in Softonic

Trying to find ways of boosting the speed of your PC is a constant uphill battle and whether you add software or hardware, any improvement never seems to last long.

With increasingly sophisticated programs putting more pressure on your RAM and CPU this is hardly surprising but sometimes, just a bit of tweaking may be all you need. PC Booster 2008 works via an interface that looks something like a virus checker although instead of checking for infections, PC Booster 2008 checks for areas of your system that could do with tightening up.

What's nice is that PC Booster 2008 gives you various options such as Optimize, Autotune, Stabilize, Customize and Benchmark your system. So for example, if you've been suffering frequent crashes, you'll want to try and stabilize your machine. If speed has been an issue, optimizing it will be better. It's not entirely clear what the difference is between Autotune and Optimize and PC Booster 2008 developers could probably have combined these two functions into one but wither way, the result is that your system should run faster.

Within each option in PC Booster 2008, you're given several sub-categories so for example, if you choose Optimize, you are given options for hard disk tweaks, network tweaks, memory tweaks etc. Although this gives you the feeling that you're really getting deep down into your system, I'm still skeptical as to exactly how much difference they really make.

If you're looking for a faster, more responsive system or are looking to iron out annoying crashes and system failures, PC Booster 2008 is worth a try.

Download PC Booster 2008 in Softonic

Geekbench is a completely awesome cross-platform benchmark that measures the performance of your computer's processor and memory. Geekbench also offers the sexy Geekbench Result Browser which lets you compare your Geekbench scores with other Geekbench users.

Download Geekbench 2.0.15 in Softonic

Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with all games using DirectX or OpenGL technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:

Benchmarking Software

See how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen. Perform custom benchmarks and measure the frame rate between any two points. Save the statistics out to disk and use them for your own reviews and applications.

Screen Capture Software

Take a screenshot with the press of a key! There's no need to paste into a paint program every time you want to capture the screen. Your screen captures are also automatically named and timestamped.

Realtime Video Capture Software

Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favourite game? Come join the Machinima revolution! Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy! Fraps can capture audio and video up to 1152x864 and 100 frames per second!

Download Fraps 2.9.4 in Softonic

Fresh Diagnose is a utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard / motherboard information, and a lot more besides.

System Information: Scan your system and get a complete report about your computer's hardware and software, for example: motherboard information, video system information, PCI / AGP buses information, peripheral (keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.) information, network information.

System Benchmarks: Test your system performance, such as CPU, hard disk, CD/DVD ROM, and compare it with other systems.

Download Fresh Diagnose 7.80 in Softonic

Disk Bench calculates the velocity of your hard drive. All it does is copy a file from A to B, time the action and deletes the file from B. The other way to benchmark is to choose Create File. This way it just creates a file (consisting of a repeated 128 byte string). So if you only have one harddisk, this is the optimal test for you.

Download Disk Bench 2.5.0.10 in Softonic

CrystalDiskMark allows you to measure the reading and writing speeds of your hard drives by running a series of tests. This is probably something we don't need to do everyday, but it comes in very handy when your hard drive's performance falls too short of your expectations.

The program doesn't require installation: uncompress it into any folder and you're ready to go. It includes several kinds of test, although unfortunately no information is given about what these tests really do or what results you should expect. In any case, once the analysis is finished you can copy the data directly to the Cipboard.

An easy way to detect any possible physical problem on your hard drive.

Download CrystalDiskMark 2.1.1 in Softonic

There's nothing more annoying for me at the end of the day when you just want to shutdown your PC and you simply can't because something is hanging up your system or you've got so many applications open that your start menu is working sluggishly.

If you are equally tired of how long it takes Windows to shutdown or have problems access your shutdown button when you've got lots of applications open then Tray Shutdown is a simply but powerful tool that should put to bed your shutdown blues. With this program, you can reboot, force suspension mode and even perform a complete shutdown (shut down the operating system and then the PC), with a single click in your System Tray. The program is entered into your registry so that as soon as you start Windows, it automatically runs so that it's always on hand should you need it. It sits in the system tray until you click on it and the context menu appears giving you a series of options such as Log Off, Shut Down, Restart, Power Off, Force Shutdown. You can also select whether to set shutdowns to work on a timer, whether you want to do it with one or two clicks and whether you want to confirm before a shutdown happens. The only problem is that, even this program can't help you if you suffer major crashes and in addition, it can be dangerous to "force" shutdowns especially if your version of Windows has benchmarking enabled which allows you to roll-back to previous configurations of Windows.

If you do need to shutdown, restart or log off in a hurry though, Tray Shutdown is a slightly quicker alternative to Windows Start menu although there's not much in it.

Download Tray Shutdown 1.01 in Softonic

Everest Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning Everest technology.

During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings.

CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes Everest Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

Download Everest Ultimate Edition 4.20.1170 in Softonic

TweakVista is an all in one control panel for your Vista computer. We were slightly put off by the cluttered interface, especially the welcome screen with its lists of news and recommendations. Annoyingly, the program window can't be resized and you can't scroll down a list.

Despite this cosmetic drawback, TweakVista does offer some pretty useful tools. You can set a user profile according to what use you will make of your PC, like if you'll be playing games a lot. The program also allows you to tweak internet and power performances depending on your habits, although we suggest you leave it to default. Setting your PC to a mode which is too aggressive may cause your PC to crash.

We were well impressed by the assessment tool to benchmark your PCs capabilities against others but much less by the resources section, which all in all, equals to what you find in your PC's task manager. Many of the functions in TweakVista also link to some of your PCs default tools like the Disk Cleaner and in some ways the application those turn into some sort of dashboard for all your Vista optimization.

TweakVista is a mix of effective optimization tools and other more basic, run-of-the-mill functions that you'll find in your Control Panel. If used well, it should improve your Vista PC's performance.

Download TweakVista 1.10 in Softonic

HD Tune is a set of tests specially designed to extract all the information about your hard drive. What it reports is the capacity of your unit, its transfer speed, access time, CPU usage, disk temperature and SMART information.

Here's what HD Tune has to offer:

• Benchmark: measures the raw performance
• Hard Disk information which includes partition information, supported features, firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
• Hard Disk Health
• Error scan
• Temperature display
• Copy text to clipboard
• Copy screenshot to clipboard

Download HD Tune 2.55 in Softonic

PC Info is not a hardware benchmark or detection utility. This program is used mainly by network administrators who need to have a summary summary of all the devices installed in every single machine they work with.

This tool will help to make your work more effective, saving time and money when trying to discover who installed what. In this way, if any problem occurs, you will have all the information you need with just a few clicks.

The only thing you need is to create a database with all the computers, including owner name and a list of all the installed components. This list can also be exported to other formats.

Download PC Info 3.6 in Softonic

CrystalMark allows you to test your CPU, memory, HDD and video (GDI, Direct Draw, OpenGL) and subsystems. It also displays useful information about your system which can be saved in a text or HTML file.

CrystalMark allows you to test separate components and to also obtain detailed information about them.

Download CrystalMark 2004 R2 in Softonic

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings.

CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

Download Everest 4.20 in Softonic

Let me see: you're a hardcore gamer. You've tried every single FPS published in the last five years. You spend hours training with your clan every day. But have you ever tried designing your own games?

This is precisely what you can do with FPS Creator, an excellent game editor that enables you to create your own FPS adventures in a very easy way. No programming and no 3D modeling required! The program's interface does take a time to get used to, but you'll be creating your first levels in no time. Also, don't panic if you see no help available inside the program: look for the PDF user manual inside the game's folder.

FPS Creator includes a wide selection of 3D elements to recreate the game of your dreams: rooms, corridors, doors, decoration and more. Everything is taken care of, so for example, if you put a lamp inside a room, the editor will automatically control light dynamics.

But the best is yet to come: a single click will drop you inside your own creation after rendering it in 3D. You'll be able to walk along the rooms and corridors you just designed to adjust the last details or simply have fun with your own game.

Download FPS Creator 1.0 in Softonic

AIDA32 is a professional system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program running on all Windows platforms. It can extract details of all components installed on your PC and thus can help you diagnose what is wrong with it or present the results to a technician.

You can save it to file in various formats such as HTML, CSV or XML. For corporate users, you can also upgrade to command-line switches, network audits and audit statistics, remote system information and network management.

If nothing else, you can learn a hell of a lot about your system from this program. It has a built-in database of other 22,000 components with detailed information relating to each one. It displays physical information for your CPU, motherboard, hard disk, optical drive, buses, sensor information, installed programs and even event logs list. If you have any Iomega external devices, it can even map and diagnose them for problems.

This is a highly comprehensive benchmarking program although it can run rather slowly in diagnosing and scanning your system.

Download AIDA32 3.94.2 in Softonic

I must admit I'm a very math-challenged person. Numbers were my main weakness at school and even nowadays I have problems to check if my change is correct when I'm shopping. But this doesn't mean I can't appreciate a tool like Math Solver.

This amazing program helps you solve all kinds of mathematical problems, from a simple addition to a complicated geometrical function. Not only does it solve the operation, but also draws a graph based on it if possible, and gives extra information about the generated graph. The program also includes an excellent database with constants and functions.

On the downside, I think Math Solver is not really comfortable to use. Solving expressions and representing functions take too many clicks. Also, as each piece of information is offered in a separate window, your desktop can get really messy. Besides, Math Solver keeps a history of previously entered expressions so that you can review them or reuse them at any moment, but unfortunately they're not saved when you quit the program.

Download Math Solver II 1.1 in Softonic

Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing and benchmarking. PassMark PerformanceTest ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.

Features:

• Find out if your PC is performing at its best
• Compare the performance of your machine to similar machines
• Measure the effect of configuration changes and upgrades
• Avoid paying big bucks for poor performance
• Make objective independent measurements on which to base your purchasing decision
• Use the advanced tests to create you own benchmark scenarios

Download Passmark PerformanceTest 6.1 in Softonic

Emsa Disk Check is a dual-purpose utility, for disk checking (prescan and full disk reading) and also benchmarking. It works by scanning/reading the entire contents of a disk (CD, DVD or hard drive; or even floppy) and show any read errors that may appear, but also show drive speed information, progress statistics etc. It was designed with simplicity in mind, but also usefulness for the user.

You can use it to do a full check of the surface of any disks, for example if you have just scratched a disk and want to see if it is still readable, or if you want to check all your cd library for time or usage related faults. You can also use it for drive benchmarking, easily comparing speeds through 'X' speed multiplier factor, in real conditions.

You can also scan hard drives or even floppies - and get real condition performance information accordingly with drive performance but also with the way data is stored on it, which obviously impacts on overall performance. Make sure you clean the CD or DVD before doing tests, to remove dirt and ensure tests are accurate.

Download Emsa Disk Check 1.0.77 in Softonic