Reviewing Workstation Inventory

An extremely useful action you can perform on workstations you are managing is checking the inventory for the particular workstation you are working on. The inventory provides you with useful information about the hardware and software installed on the workstation.

Accessing the workstation's inventory enables you to determine whether there are any obvious hardware or software problems or incompatibilities in the system. For instance, you could determine that the workstation is running an outdated version of software that needed to be upgraded. You could then upgrade the application using ZENworks application distribution.

The following list details the specific information you can get from the Inventory list:

• General General information gives you the basic information about the workstation such as the name, user, serial number, and so on. It also gives you login information.

• Software Software information includes everything about the software installed on the workstation from the operating system to the specific drivers being used. The software option includes:

  • Software Vendors Lists the vendors of the software installed on the workstation. By clicking on a vendor, you can see a list of applications by that vendor and determine which version of the application is installed.

  • Device Drivers Lists drivers installed for each device on the system.

  • Operating Systems Lists the operating system or systems installed on the workstation.

  • NetWare Client Shows the version of the NetWare Client.

  • Inventory Scanner Information Displays the version and mode of the inventory scanner that's running on the workstation.

• Hardware Lists all the hardware installed on the workstation. This includes everything from hard drives to port information. By clicking a listed hardware component, you can get detailed information about that component, thus allowing you to assess the hardware needs of the workstation.

• Network Gives you the DNS name of the workstation.

• System Includes general information about the basic system components such as the motherboard and CPU.