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PRTG Manual: System Information

<%NUMBERING1%>.<%NUMBERING2%>.<%NUMBERING3%> PRTG Manual: System Information

With the System Information feature, you can see what is going on in the systems that you have in your network. To see the system information for a device, click the device's System Information tab.

System Information Tab on a Windows Device

The system information shows

basic system data of your device like the BIOS serial number or MAC and IP addresses,
all connected hardware types and their properties,
the software you have installed, including version and vendor information,
the users that are connected to your system and their domains,
a list of all active or stopped Windows system services including their properties, and
a list of all processes that are running on your system, including their ID and start time.

System information is available for all devices that run with an officially supported Windows operating system. You can also retrieve system information from devices that run with Linux or Unix, and from all other devices that have the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) enabled.

You cannot use this feature on the hosted probe of a PRTG Hosted Monitor instance. You can use this feature on remote probes.

Prerequisites

You already meet the main prerequisites for retrieving system information if you already monitor a device with sensors that use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) or the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). PRTG automatically displays the data on the respective device's System Information tab. To retrieve all available system information, enable both WMI and SNMP on the device.

The System Information feature is enabled by default. To retrieve the data, PRTG automatically uses the credentials for Windows systems and the credentials for SNMP devices that you entered in the device settings or that the device inherits from a parent object like the root group. Consider this when you monitor devices that are outside of your local network, especially when you use SNMP v1 or SNMP v2c, which do not provide encryption.

Meet the following prerequisites if you do not yet use WMI or SNMP sensors:

Option	Description
Valid credentials	Specify valid credentials for Windows systems and for SNMP devices in the device settings.
Remote Registry Windows service	Enable the Remote Registry service on the target computer, for example, via services.msc, and set the Startup Type to Automatic.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Windows service	Enable the RPC Windows service on the target computer, for example, via services.msc, and set the Startup Type to Automatic.
WMI	Enable WMI on both the probe system and the target system. In particular, configure the firewall of the target system to allow WMI. For more information, see section Monitoring via WMI and the Knowledge Base: My WMI sensors don't work. What can I do?
SNMP	Enable SNMP on the target system. PRTG automatically uses the SNMP Compatibility Options as defined in the device settings or as inherited from a parent object like the root group. For more information, see section Monitoring via SNMP and the Knowledge Base: My SNMP sensors don’t work. What can I do?

It is not necessary to meet every single prerequisite but then some tables do not show all data or they can even remain empty. For example, if you do not enable SNMP on the target device, you get less information for the System table.

The first data usually comes in after a few minutes. If PRTG cannot retrieve some data, for example, because of a misconfiguration, the respective System Information table shows an error message.
For more information, see the Knowledge Base: How can PRTG get data for System Information tables?

System information for your devices is only for informational purposes. We cannot guarantee that the data displayed in PRTG fully corresponds to the device parameters.

Error Messages: No Data Available

System Information (Device Tab)

Probe, group, device, and sensor pages have tabs that you can use to navigate between the different options. For example, you can view your network's status, view monitoring results, or change settings.

Tabs Bar for Devices

Select a device and click the System Information tab.

The System Information feature is enabled by default. If you do not see the System Information tab, you need to enable System Information in the device settings under Advanced Network Analysis. You can also inherit the setting from an object that is higher in the object hierarchy.

Advanced Network Analysis

Analyze Your Systems

On the System Information tab, PRTG displays a table for each system information category for the device.

Category	System Information	Request Method (WMI or SNMP)
System	Shows system data of the device like the BIOS serial number, IP addresses, MAC addresses, and the Windows version.	WMI and SNMP
Hardware	Shows hardware that is connected to the device like disk drives, CD/DVD, video controllers, processors, network adapters, sound devices, printers, and memory. You can see the Class and the Caption of a hardware device. In the Properties column, you get more information about the hardware, for example, the description.	WMI and SNMP
Software	Shows the installed software and the Version number of the device. In the Properties column, you get more information about the software, for example, the size. PRTG uses Uninstall registry keys to retrieve the list of installed software, so the displayed software might differ from the software that the target Windows system shows under Programs and Features. The System Information scan for software on the probe device uses the credentials of the probe system and ignores credentials that you specified on the Settings tab.	WMI and SNMP
Users	Shows the user accounts that are connected to the device and their Domain.	WMI
Services	Shows the available Windows services on the device. You can see the State of the service (running, stopped) and the start type (Startup Type automatic, manual, or disabled). In the Properties column, you can get more information about a service, for example, the description.	WMI
Processes	Shows the processes that are running on the device as listed on the Processes tab of the Windows Task Manager. You can also see the Start Time (only WMI) and Process ID of a process.	WMI and SNMP

You can sort each table list via the column headers.

Click in the upper-right corner of a table to retrieve new information for this System Information category. The time stamp shows the time that has passed since the last table refresh.

Table Refresh

PRTG automatically retrieves data for the tables System, Hardware, and Software once every 24 hours. The tables Users, Services, and Processes refresh each time you open the System Information tab. PRTG also updates all system information tables when the PRTG core server is restarted, for example, after an update.

PRTG can perform up to 24 system information scans at the same time, so it can take some time until you see data in the tables after a server restart.

Data Storage

PRTG stores data files with the retrieved system information in the corresponding \System Information Database subfolders of the PRTG data directory.

If you delete a device, the system information files of this device remain in these subfolders unless you manually delete them.

PRTG uses the following subfolders for System Information data.

Subfolder	Description
hardware	Data for the Hardware table
loggedonusers	Data for the Users table
processes	Data for the Processes table
services	Data for the Services table
software	Data for the Software table
system	Data for the System table

KNOWLEDGE BASE

My WMI sensors don't work. What can I do?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/1043

My SNMP sensors don’t work. What can I do?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/46863

How can PRTG get data for System Information tables?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/67824

My HTTP sensors don't work. What can I do?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/85284

Why do I get DoS alarms on my QNAP?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/80421