Digital Compass

Usually, users identify hardware complaints far too late, almost when the hard disk has given up or the CPU is burnt out. By that time, No tool can help save your pc, Luckily, identifying problems at the right time and helping the pc stay healthy is child's play. To find hard disk problems, use the tool HDDlife, This program monitors all windows partitions, analyses read errors as they crop up, and assesses the reliability and the performance of your drives, Additionally, HDDlife monitors the temperature of the HDD so you can combat death caused by overheating with adequate time in hand,

Since the program also displays how many hours the hard disk has been in operation. It is easy to track how long it will continue working on the basis of the data from the manufacturer

Tip: For Vista, the tool offers a sidebar gadget with which you can constantly keep an eye on space utilization, You can find more information at hddlife.com

Check Your CPU:

An occasional check of the CPU is an essential part of system monitoring, This is because temperature and processor utilization values shooting through the roof are the first warning signs of a defective fans or programs taxing the system too much, With the tool Core temp, This is not a problem, The program runs without needing any installation and immediately displays all the information you need, Observe for example, the heat generated, If the CPU is continuously staying warmer than 60 degrees Celsius, you must check the fans, A complete list of compatible chip sets and a few add-ons can be found at alcpu.com/coretemp.

Monitoring on the desktop:

If you don't want to run several monitoring tools at the same time, The mini application Bginfo, Which is actually a part of the Microsoft sysinternals suite, is exactly the one you need, Based on predefined commands, You can directly see system information on the desktop, such as the version number of the most recent service pack that installed, the name of the host, The hard disk partitions, the network connections, and the amount of free RAM. You can find the package and more info at Microsoft.com