Spot malware and troubleshoot PCs with QuickDiag
QuickDiag is a portable tool which creates an in-depth and highly technical report on your Windows setup, running processes and installed applications.
It’s not for beginners, but if you’re looking for a quick way to collect key system information -- maybe to troubleshoot problems on a friend’s PC -- the program could be ideal.
The interface is, well, minimal. It presents you with three buttons -- Xspeed for the simplest report, Quick is a little more detailed, Extended is the most complete -- and clicking any of these generates copies of these reports on the desktop and root folder.
The scanning process takes a long time, typically several minutes, because there’s a lot of work to do. The program doesn’t just list key files, for instance, it also generates MD5 hashes to help identify them, and that takes time.
The completed text reports are huge. Our test system’s Xspeed report was 285KB, the Quick version was 780KB.
Report formatting is almost non-existent. There are no tables, no fixed-width columns, no consistent use of commas so you can import it somewhere as a CSV. Expect plenty of scrolling in all directions to find what you need.
What QuickDiag does offer is lots of information. Here are just some of the categories.
- Basic hardware details including CPU, motherboard, video, sound
- Codecs
- Network adapters
- Ping results to google.com (confirms working internet connection)
- Firewall rules
- SID Users
- SystemAccounts
- Key system and application files and folders
- Installed security software
- Running processes, including the owning account and parent
- Loaded modules
- Explorer components
- Svchost.exe components
- Startup programs
- Many key Registry settings
- Wininit.ini, Win.ini, System.ini, HOSTS files
- Scheduled tasks
- Windows services
- File associations
- User shortcuts including arguments (possibly malicious)
- Explorer and Windows policies
- Winlogon setup
- AppcompatFlags (may show programs launched on this system, even long ago)
- Safe Mode settings
- Internet Explorer settings
- Browser extensions, browser helper objects, Firefox preferences, more
- Installed applications
- Uninstaller list
- Last 20 Windows events
We’ve seen similar applications before, but QuickDiag wins out most of them for its thoroughness. Geeks everywhere should download a copy immediately. Even if you don’t need it right now, just reviewing which Registry settings the program collects is an education and might give you some troubleshooting ideas of your own. Beware, the report’s presentation is about as polished as a batch file, but we say give it a try anyway.
QuickDiag is available for Windows 7 and earlier.