PC Wizard 2012 is a very useful system utility software for aiding those with a modding, repairing or upgrading background. With its wealth of information, no secrets your computer holds will be untold. This system utility software has the ability to scan every aspect of your hardware, ranging from naming the brand of speakers you have to something as in depth as your processor’s actual frequency versus its theoretical. But that is just information located on the hardware tab. With the ability to both analyze and benchmark, this system utility software is set apart from most.
Install PC Wizard 2012 System Utility Software
The PC Wizard 2012 System Utility installation is mostly straight forward. It tries not to throw any curve balls at the installer. The one caveat in the entire install process would be asking if you would like to install the Ask Toolbar along with the system utility. A simple check box left unchecked will remedy the situation if you are not one for installing toolbars. This procedure is done by almost all free software companies as an alternative to regular advertising by allowing the user to opt out with a single click. If one was running through the installer blindly hitting “Next”, they would unknowingly install it along with the program. I only bring this to attention for those of us who like to strictly govern what is installed on our PC, not that there is anything inherently wrong with the toolbar.System Utility Program Use
This system utility covers so many aspects of your computer that it is going to be difficult to cover all of them, so I will try to point out the most helpful parts along with showing you some of the information that this beast can put at your fingertips. With such information as installed hardware, operating system specifics, basic network layout, and benchmarking, this utility has it all and excels in every category.
We will start with how it defines and lists the complete specs of your system. This paired with Belarc Advisor is a fantastic utility duo for quick and easy PC research–although we will cover it solely in a future article. With PC Wizard’s main layout screen, as shown above, you are greeted with a welcoming interface that is easy to navigate and lists a basic rundown of what it has found out about your system. When the system utility is finished performing an initial scan of your computer you will see what model motherboard is installed, what type and speed processor, all hard drives, DirectX Version, and many other details.
You can navigate out of the default view into whatever specific areas you are looking for. The buttons on the left in the Hardware Tab are as follows: Motherboard, Processor, Video, IO Ports, Drives, Printers, Devices, Multimedia, Network, Power Status, Voltage/Temp/Fans, Power Supply, and Windows Hardware Experience Index. Clicking on any of those will go into extreme detail listing everything you could ever want to know about it.
Next we will show a very helpful view from the Voltage/Temperature/Fans button.
This is one of the most important views as for all of the critical information that it gives. If you want to know your 12V or 5V rails, it has it. Need to know what voltage and temp your processor is using? No problem. Curious how fast your fans are turning or what the temperature is on the hard drives or north/south bridge heatsinks–it is all there. The information is all printable if you would rather analyze it off-screen.
As I stated before, all the above information from the utility is only from the first Hardware tab. There are still 4 other tabs to jump through. I wont walk you through all of them but just give you a bit of a “basics” run-through of what each tab consists of. This article would be massive if I went into every detail. Hopefully this article will spark your interest and you can install and swim through all the features available in PC Wizard 2012.
Second on the tab order would be the Configuration settings. Here, the utility shows the basic OS information, .dll configurations, in depth DirectX setup, and many others. Two nice parts in this are the Passwords and Security fields in which you can see any system passwords if logged in as an Admin and see what firewalls are enabled or disabled. Good place to check on the fundamental security of your overall system.
Next, the System Files tab holds such info as Group Policy settings for Shutdown or Startup, system.ini listings, and Boot Config data. If you want to check all of the Environment Variables for your OS, that can be done here as well. Granted you can do a good portion of this as long as you know where to look in Windows but this puts them all in one neat concise location.
The Resources tab shows the IRQ log, IO Port statistics, and Network listening along with a few others. The handiest of these is by far the Network button which shows what IPs your computer is listening on, operating on, and what traffic is coming in. That data can be very beneficial if you are trying to diagnose network lag, possible virus intrusion, or internet errors.
Finally, the Benchmark tab has testing/benchmarking tools for everything from Hard drive to MP3 compressing. With these, benchmarking your new build or old stable computer will give you a good idea what you have at your disposal.
Summary
All in all, this system utility software stacks up among or above most others I have tried and best of all, it is free. If you are an experienced computer user and want to know anything about your rig fast or you are a novice having computer issues and need all this info to be able to post in the forum area for help, PC Wizard 2012 will assist in every way. Being in the IT field for going on 9 years now, I can safely say that there are not many programs out there that will put all of this information in one place to sift through especially for no cost to you but your time. There is only one true way to know if this software is for you, give it a shot and download it here.
Let us know how you find it.
