We install several software on our systems over a period of time and sometime we forget to remove then from the system after we are done with them. Also Microsoft issues hotfixes for security issues, if you didn’t turn on Windows Update you might be missing windows hotfixes for critical security issues. Belarc Advisor is a nifty windows application that can be used to address these type of issues.
Belarc Advisor is just around 3.0 MB in size, and gives information about software and hardware installed on your system. It makes a report of the software installed and displays as a html report in your browser. It will also display missing Microsoft hotfixes for Windows, anti-virus status of your system and security benckmarks.
Installed Software:
The software report includes list of software along with information on when it was used last time, this information is quite useful if you want to get rid of the software that you haven’t used for long time. On mouse hover on the little icons before each software application you can see the details like last used date, modified date, installer name, size of the application. It also displays the Software License keys of the applications installed along with the name of the application.
It displays the list of Microsoft Security Hotfixes that are missing from your system, It will also add the rating to these hotfixes (for example Important or Critical), you can also see more information about these hotfixes by clicking the details link, It will redirect you to the Microsoft security site. You can also see the list of installed Microsoft Hotfixes and their details in this report.
Installed Hardware:
Along with the list of software installed on your system you can see the list of hardware installed on your system. It displays details of the processor, mother board, hosted virtual machines if any and much more.
You can the list of USB drives used in the last 30 days along with the date and time of the usage, this information is useful to see if unknown drives were used to copy information from your system when you are not around.
The other hardware profiles displayed includes Memory modules, system drives, network drives, printers, display monitors and multimedia devices.
Overall this Belarc Advisor is quite useful application for checking your system for installed software and hardware from time to time. This is free application for Windows and works with almost every Windows installation out there, including XP, Vista and Windows 7. This freeware is recently updated to version 8.2.7.9.
Download Belarc Advisor
