Belarc Advisor

A great way to get to know your PC’s insides, Belarc Advisor scans your system in seconds and loads up a detailed profile in your Web browser. The front page tells you what hardware you’ve got. It even tells you what RAM you’re running and whether you have free slots to install more. Other pages notify you if you’ve missed a Microsoft Update or if your virus protection is out of date.

Hiring a professional computer-security consultant is out of reach for most home PC users, but Belarc Advisor can fill part of that gap.

The app analyzes a machine’s weak points, looking at elements such as whether antivirus software is up to date, or whether all the security flaws in Windows have been patched. It uses the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark test to give the computer a score showing its overall security level, and produces a report that can be viewed in a Web browser.

Not only does it analyze software and operating system components and tell you where problems are, but in its comprehensive report it tells you what your computer’s physical components are: not just how much RAM you have, for example, but what kind of RAM and which slots are occupied.

This program doesn’t fix the problems itself, but gives clear advice on how to address each issue. This download is free for personal use; we recommend it to home users as a first step in securing their home systems, or for those considering a hardware upgrade who want to see what’s in their current system.

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