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If you consider yourself a Windows power user, then you know there is much more to how Windows works besides a taskbar and start menu. There are many other components such as drivers for your hardware, the Windows registry, system files and so on. Being able to find this information quickly is important when it comes to managing and troubleshooting computer issues.
There are several ways to go about finding information about your computer such as Device Manager, Disk Management and even the System Information tool as seen below. Even if you built your own computer, you may still need to see specific details about its hardware and other settings. In this article, we will be showing you how to use the FastFetch command to show detailed system information about your PC.
The FastFetch command is not built into Windows but was rather designed by a third party software developer and offered for free to anyone who wants to use it. It’s even available for Linux users as well.
Once you download and extract the zip file, you will have several files, including the fastfetch.exe executable file. You cannot simply double click this file to run the tool but rather need to run it from a command line.
To do so, simply open the Windows command prompt by typing cmd in the taskbar search box. Then you will need to navigate to the directory that contains the FastFetch files. Once you are there, simply type fastfetch at the prompt to run the tool.
Once your system details are displayed, you will be able to a variety of information about your computer such as:
- Username
- Computer Name
- OS Version
- Updtime
- CPU Info
- Graphics Card Info
- Memory (RAM) Info
- Hard Drive Details – Used space, free space, drive format
- Network IP Address
If you plan on using FastFetch on a regular basis, you can add it to your system path settings so you can run it without having to navigate to the folder location of the executable first. In other words, you can simply open a command prompt, type in fastfetch and it will run the tool.
To configure this, type Environment Variables in the Windows taskbar search box. Then on the Advanced tab of the System Properties settings, click the Environment Variables button.
Next, you will want to click on the Path line and then on the Edit button.
In the edit environment variable section, click the New button to add a new line to the existing entries. Then simply type in the path to the folder that contains the FastFetch executable. You should first place the folder in the location where you will want to keep the files so you don’t end up moving it later and breaking the path.
Once you have entered the path to the FastFetch folder, click the OK button and now you will be able to run the command no matter where your command prompt is focused.
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