<%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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Analyze Your Systems

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

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.

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.

More

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