Manage A Computer’s Assets and Inventory Using Free Software

Purchased programs and applications and other software investments often times revolve around a serial number or activation code. After we install applications, we often times use the purchased serial number to activate the software, but then forget about it. Thus, when it comes reinstall time, or reactivation time, we don’t have the serial number, unless we jotted it down. With today’s free application, you can recover serial numbers and activation codes for the majority of your paid applications, view detailed system analytics about a PC, and much more.

The freeware application Belarc Advisor is a unique program that takes a digital inventory of most programs and applications in Windows. The cool thing about this program is, it works for other vendors as well, not just Windows and Microsoft products. Advisor is kind of a difficult app to explain, so let’s jump right in to the tutorial.

To get started, open up a web browser and navigate over to the Belarc homepage. Click the Free Download tab to get to the Belarc Advisor download page. Finally, click the button labeled CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY OF THE BELARC ADVISOR.

Save the installer file to your computer. Once the download finishes, double click the installer file to begin installation of Belarc Advisor. Proceed to install Belarc Advisor onto your PC, just as you would any other program.

Upon installation, Advisor should auto launch in your default browser, but if it doesn’t, open the path Start > All Programs > Belarc Advisor. The Belarc Analysis window will open and begin scanning your computer.

Once the scan completes, a browser window will open with the detailed results of the scan. Although the Belarc program uses the browser to display PC scan results, it does not connect to an external website. Instead, it creates a browser formatted local file.

The Advisor scans a variety of different system settings and programs on a PC. Some results being:

• Operating System Detection
• System Model
• Processor
• Motherboard
• Drives
• Memory
• Hosted Virtual Machines
• USB Storage
• Local Drives
• Network Drives
• Users
• Controllers
• Display
• Bus Adapters
• Multimedia
• Virus Protection
• Group Policies
• Communications
• Other Devices
• Network Map
• Missing Microsoft Security Hotfixes
• Software Licenses
• Software Versions and Usage
• and more…

Above, we mentioned that Belarc Advisor is a software that can find product keys. The Software Licenses and Software Versions and Usage sections of the Belarc Advisor scan results (browser page), should include detailed information about licenses.
That’s really all there is to it with Belarc Advisor. It’s not an overly complex application to use, but it does take into account the complexities of a PC, and lists them to help you monitor your computer more effectively.
Any other recommended programs similar to Belarc Advisor? Any Belarc Advisor users? Leave a comment!