Tip 13: Use Microsoft System Information (MSINFO32.EXE) when you can.

When you're trying to help a user with some problem (especially if you're in support), you often need to know a lot of technical stuff about the user's machine, such as what is loaded into memory or how the operating system is configured. Getting this information out of the user, even figuring out where to find it all in the first place, can be time-consuming and difficult. (Asking the user to continually hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete in an attempt to bring up the Task List and "see" what's running can be a dangerous practice: User: "Oh, my machine's rebooting." Support: "What did you do?" 919t192j User: "What you told me to do-hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete again!") Microsoft thought so too, so they provided their users with an application to gather this information automatically: Microsoft System Information (MSINFO32.EXE). The good news is that you can use this application to help your customers.

Microsoft System Information comes with applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. If you have one of those applications installed, you're almost certain to have Microsoft System Information installed too. It also ships with Visual Basic 6. If you haven't seen this applet before, choose About Microsoft Visual Basic from the Help menu and click the System Info button. You'll see a window similar to Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5 Running MSINFO32.EXE opens the Microsoft System Information application

The bottom line is that if your user is a Microsoft Office user or has an application such as Microsoft Excel installed, Microsoft System Information will be available. All you need to do then to provide the same information on the user's system is to run the same application!

To determine whether you've got this application to work with, look in the following location in the Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSInfo\Path

In the following example, we use the registration API in ADVAPI32.DLL to retrieve the value of the Registry key. We can then check to see whether the application really exists. If it does, Shell it!

Declaration Section

Option Explicit

Private Const REG_SZ As Long = 1
Private Const ERROR_SUCCESS As Long = 0
Private Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE As Long = &H80000002
Private Const STANDARD_RIGHTS_ALL As Long = &H1F0000
Private Const KEY_QUERY_VALUE As Long = &H1
Private Const KEY_ENUMERATE_SUB_KEYS As Long = &H8
Private Const KEY_NOTIFY As Long = &H10
Private Const SYNCHRONIZE As Long = &H100000
Private Const READ_CONTROL As Long = &H20000
Private Const STANDARD_RIGHTS_READ As Long = (READ_CONTROL)
Private Const KEY_READ As Long = _
((STANDARD_RIGHTS_READ _
Or KEY_QUERY_VALUE _
Or KEY_ENUMERATE_SUB_KEYS _
Or KEY_NOTIFY) _
And (Not SYNCHRONIZE))

Private Declare Function WinRegOpenKeyEx Lib "advapi32.dll" _
Alias "RegOpenKeyExA" (ByVal hKey As Long, _
ByVal lpSubKey As String, _
ByVal ulOptions As Long, _
ByVal samDesired As Long, _
phkResult As Long) As Long

Private Declare Function WinRegQueryValueEx Lib _
"advapi32.dll" Alias "RegQueryValueExA" _
(ByVal hKey As Long, _
ByVal lpValueName As String, _
ByVal lpReserved As Long, _
lpType As Long, lpData As Any, _
lpcbData As Long) As Long

Private Declare Function WinRegCloseKey Lib "advapi32" _
Alias "RegCloseKey" (ByVal hKey As Long) As Long

Form Load Event

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim hKey As Long
Dim lType As Long
Dim Buffer As String

' Need some space to write string into - DLL routine
' expects us to allocate this space before the call.
Buffer = Space(255)

' Always expect failure!
cmdSystemInfo.Visible = False

' This will work if Microsoft System Information is installed.
If WinRegOpenKeyEx( _
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE _
, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSInfo" _
, 0 _
, KEY_READ _
, hKey _
) = ERROR_SUCCESS Then

' Read the Path value - happens to include the filename
' too, e.g.,
' "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\
' MSinfo\msinfo32.exe".
If WinRegQueryValueEx( _
hKey _
, "Path" _
, 0 _
, lType _
, ByVal Buffer _
, Len(Buffer) _
) = ERROR_SUCCESS Then
' Make sure we read a string back. If we did...
If lType = REG_SZ Then
' Make sure the Registry and reality are in
' alignment!
' Note: Using FileAttr() means you're
' suffering from paranoia<g>.
If Dir$(Buffer) <> "" Then
' Put the path into the button's Tag
' property and make the button visible.
cmdSystemInfo.Tag = Buffer
cmdSystemInfo.Visible = True
End If
End If

End If

' We open - we close.
Call WinRegCloseKey(hKey)

End If

End Sub

Button Click Event

Private Sub cmdSystemInfo_Click()

' If we got clicked, we must be visible and therefore
' must have our Tag property set to the name of the
' Microsoft System Information application - Shell it!
Call Shell(cmdSystemInfo.Tag, vbNormalFocus)

End Sub

In the code above, as the form loads (maybe this is an About box?) it detects whether or not Microsoft System Information exists. If it does, the form makes a command button visible and sets its Tag property to point to the program. When the form becomes visible, the button either will or won't be visible. If it is visible, you have Microsoft System Information on your machine. When you click the button, it simply calls Shell with the value in its Tag property. For more information on the APIs used in this example, see the appropriate Win32 documentation.

One of the neat little extras that came first with Visual Basic 5 was the little wizard dialog "thang" that allowed you to add standard dialog boxes to your application. One of these standard dialog boxes is an About dialog box. You'll notice that the About dialog box comes complete with a System Info button. The dialog box displays the Microsoft System Information utility using code similar to that shown above. (I think ours is cooler so I've left it here in the second edition.) This raises an interesting question, however. Is Microsoft implicitly giving you and me permission to ship MSINFO32.EXE (and anything that it needs) with an EXE? I'm afraid I don't know the answer to this one-sorry!