How to Check Your Motherboard Model Number on Your Windows PC

Whether you need to update drivers, want to check hardware compatibility, or you’re just curious, it’s way easier to check your motherboard model number with these simple tricks than it is to crack open your computer case to check the board itself. Read on as we show you how to check your motherboard model number from the comfort of your keyboard.

Why Do I Want To Do This?

There are a variety of situations where knowing your motherboard’s model number is important: upgrading your drivers, buying new hardware (you’ll need the proper expansion slots for card-based upgrades and the right memory DIMMS for memory upgrades, etc.), and checking the capabilities of your board if you’re considering upgrading the entire thing.

If you kept the paperwork that came with your computer (or the individual components if you built it yourself) you can often times reference that. Even then, it’s best to check to make sure the documentation is correct. Rather than open the case and search for the model number, it’s easy to use tools within Windows to check things out.

Checking Your Model Number via CMD.exe

If you’re comfortable using the command line, you can easily check a variety of motherboard and hardware stats using the handy Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) a command-line interface for Microsoft’s powerful WMI tool.

With the WMIC we can entry the query baseboard to check motherboard stats and then additional specific query modifiers like get Manufacturer, Model, Name, PartNumber, slotlayout, serialnumber, poweredon to get more detailed information about the motherboard. Let’s check our motherboard’s manufacturer, model number, and serial number using WMIC.

Open up the command prompt in Windows via either the run dialog (WIN+R) or via the search in the start menu; enter cmd.exe into either, no need to run it as an administrator. Enter the following text at the command line.

wmic baseboard get product,Manufacturer,version,serialnumber

This will return the following data.

The above information checks out for our system: the manufacturer is MSI, the board is the Z87-G45 (MS-7821), and while the WMIC tool attempted to check the serial number apparently, alas, MSI left that particular bit unfilled for whatever reason. None the less, the WMIC tool functioned just as it should, and without opening the case or using any third party tools we have the basic information we’re looking for.

Checking Your Model Number via Speccy

If you’d prefer a GUI-based way to check your motherboard’s model number (as well as a method that yields more information at a glance than the WMIC tool), the free tool Speccy by Piriform (the folks that brought us CCleaner) is a handy app to have around.

Grab a free download here and then fire it up.

Not only will it tell your model number, as seen above, but if you click on the Motherboard entry in the left hand navigation column, you can check even more information about the motherboard like the chipset and voltage settings.

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Have a pressing tech question, hardware releated or otherwise? Shoot us an email at ask@howtogeek.com and we’ll do our best to answer it.

How to Create Encrypted Zip or 7z Archives on Any Operating System

Zip files can be password-protected, but the standard Zip encryption scheme is extremely weak. If your operating system has a built-in way to encrypt zip files, you probably shouldn’t use it.

To gain the actual benefits of encryption, you should use AES-256 encryption. 7z archives support this natively, but you can also encrypt Zip files with AES-256 encryption.

Zip 2.0 Legacy Encryption vs. AES Encryption

There are actually two types of Zip file encryption. The older Zip 2.0 encryption is extremely insecure, while the newer AES encryption is fairly secure.

Unfortunately, many pieces of software — particularly operating systems with built-in support for Zip files — don’t support the newer AES encryption standard. This means that using the Zip password-protection features found in Windows XP, current versions of Mac OS X, and even typical Linux desktops won’t give you securely encrypted Zip files. Even some third-party utilities are reluctant to switch to AES for their Zip encryption as it means those AES-encrypted zip files will then be incompatible with the built-in Zip features in Windows, Mac OS X, and other software.

It’s still possible to get AES encryption with Zip files — but such files will require third-party software to view, anyway. You may just want to use a different archive format, such as 7z. The 7z archive format requires strong AES-256 encryption. Whenever you create a password-protected 7z file, you know that it’s securely encrypted. Really, 7z is great — it came out on top in our file-compression benchmarks. It’s generally on the top of other file compression benchmarks we’ve seen, too.

Windows – 7-Zip

Windows offers a built-in way to create Zip files. Windows XP even offered a way to password-protect and encrypt these Zip files. However, Windows XP used the extremely insecure “standard” zip file encryption algorithm. Even if you’re still using Windows XP, you shouldn’t use this feature. Later versions of Windows dropped the password-protection option entirely.

Nearly every popular encryption utility offers this features. We like 7-Zip, which is completely free and open-source, so it won’t try to nag you for any money.

With 7-Zip installed, you can select some files in a File Explorer or Windows Explorer window, right-click them, and select 7-Zip > Add to archive. Be sure to select the “Add to archive” option, as it gives you the ability to set a password. If you don’t see the menu option here, you can also open the 7-Zip application directly and use it to create an archive.

7-Zip will create a 7z archive by default, but you can also choose Zip. If you do opt to go with Zip, be sure to select the AES-256 encryption method instead of the weaker ZipCrypto method. Enter your password into the provided boxes and click OK to create your encrypted archive file.

Mac – Keka

Mac OS X also provides an easy way to create Zip files from a Finder window, but there’s no way to encrypt a zip file with the graphical user interface. The zip command included with Mac OS X does offer a way to encrypt zip files without using any third-party software. However, like the password-protection feature built into Windows XP, it uses the old and insecure standard zip encryption scheme. If you really wanted, you could use the “zip -e” command in a Terminal on a Mac. However, we strongly recommend against this.

As on Windows, you’ll once again need a third-party file compression app for secure compression. Keka seems to be one of the most well-loved file compression and decompression apps for Mac, and we can recommend it. However, even Keka doesn’t use AES for encrypting Zip files by default. You can get the currently-in-beta version of Keka and enable a hidden option to do this, or just use the standard version of Keka and create encrypted 7z files instead.

Launch Keka, select 7z, and enter a password for your archive. (If you select Zip, be sure you have the correct version of Keka and that you’ve enabled the hidden option above to get the secure encryption.)

Drag and drop one or more files you want to compress onto the Keka window and they’ll be compressed into a 7z file encrypted with the password you provided. You’ll need the password to access the file’s contents in the future.

Linux – File Roller with p7zip-full

The standard Archive Manager (File Roller) application included with Ubuntu and other GNOME-based desktop environments does have an option to create password-protected zip files. However, the underlying zip command used still uses the old, weak encryption instead of strong AES encryption. Thankfully, File Roller can be used to create encrypted 7z archives.

To enable this option, you’ll first need to install the p7zip-full package. (On some Linux distributions, it may just be called p7zip instead.) For example, on Ubuntu, you can either open the Ubuntu Software Center, search for p7zip-full and install it, or open a Terminal window and run the sudo apt-get install p7zip-full command.

Once you have, you can create encrypted 7z files directly from the File Roller window. Select some files in a file manager window, right-click them, and select Compress — or open the Archive Manager application directly and use it to create a new archive.

In the Compress window, be sure to select the 7z archive format. Click the Other Options header and provide a password. The password will be used to unlock your archive later.

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There are many different software programs for creating password-protected archives, but — whatever you use — be sure it’s using secure encryption. The problem with Zip encryption isn’t purely theoretical. The web is full of tools that can “recover” a password-protected zip file that was created using the old encryption scheme. “Recover” is a less-scary word for breaking and removing the encryption.

Using Process Monitor to Troubleshoot and Find Registry Hacks

In today’s edition of Geek School we’re going to teach you how to use Process Monitor to actually accomplish troubleshooting and figuring out registry hacks that you would not know about otherwise.

SCHOOL NAVIGATION

Process Monitor is one of the most impressive tools that you can have in your toolkit, as there is almost no other way to see what an application is actually doing under the hood. It is the only way to know what files are being written to by which process, and where things are stored in the registry, and which files are accessing them.

We’ll start off with today’s lesson by looking at how to find registry keys using Windows setting dialogs and Process Monitor, and then we’ll go through an actual troubleshooting scenario that we encountered on one of our computers in the lab, and easily solved using Process Monitor.

Using Process Explorer to Find Registry Keys for Common Settings

Everybody has clicked a checkbox or changed the value of a drop-down box at some point, but have you ever wondered where those values are actually stored? Many applications, and virtually everything in Windows, is stored in the Registry… somewhere.

For today’s example we’re going to use the first option on the first pane of Taskbar and Navigation Properties, which is a dialog that should exist in all versions of Windows. So now our mission is to figure out where that setting is actually stored in the registry. You can follow along with this particular setting, or you can try one of the other settings on the same dialog — or anywhere else you’d like to find the hidden setting location for.

The first thing you’ll want to do whenever trying to capture a set of data is to launch Process Monitor, and then change the setting. At that point you can stop Process Monitor from continuing to capture events, so the list doesn’t get out of control. (Hint: the File menu has the option, or it’s the third icon from the left).

Now that we’ve got a ton of data in the list, it’s time to filter the list to reduce the number of rows that we’re going to have to look through. Since we’re looking at a registry value that is being changed, we’ll need to filter by “RegSetValue”, which is what Windows uses to actually set a registry key to a new setting. Use the “Include” option to show only those events.

Your list should now be limited to just registry keys that were changed, so it’s time to take a look at the events and try to figure out which registry key it might be. Since we’re checking the “Lock the Taskbar” setting, and one of the registry keys being set includes the word “Taskbar” in the name, that’s a good place to start. Right-click on the path and choose to Jump To the location.

Process Monitor will open up the Registry Editor and highlight the key in the list. Now we need to make sure that this is actually the right key, which is pretty easy to figure out. Take a look at the setting, and then take a look at the key. Right now the setting is on, and the key is set to 0.

So change the setting, hit Apply on the dialog, and then use the F5 key to refresh the Registry Editor window. In our case we definitely picked the right setting, so now you can see that the TaskbarSizeMove value is set to 1.

If you didn’t pick the right value, you won’t see a change when you do the setting test again. So go and find the next logical one, and start over.

Troubleshooting Problems with Process Monitor

It’s not really possible to illustrate in a single article how to troubleshoot any problem with Process Monitor, or any other tool for that matter. There are just way too many combinations of issues that could possibly go wrong.

What we can do, however, is show how we actually used Process Monitor to troubleshoot a real problem that actually happened to one of our test computers. We had been installing some crapware, and then decided to try and clean the computer up. The problem was an entry in the Uninstall Programs panel that just wouldn’t go away.

Every time you would click to Change so you could remove it, you’d get an error that said “An error occurred while trying to uninstall AwfulApp. It may have already been uninstalled. Would you like to remove AwfulApp from the Programs and Features list?”.

That would have been great, except we then got an error that said “You do not have sufficient access to remove OutfoxTV from the Programs and Features list. Please contact your system administrator.”

The first thing to do was try the uninstall process again with Process Monitor running, which captured an enormous amount of data. This time we decided to use the Find feature (CTRL + F) to quickly find what we were looking for in the list. You could also use a Filter if you wanted, but this seemed simple, and luckily it worked the first time.

After taking a look at the first item in the list, we noticed an error: Windows was attempting to access the registry keys related to the uninstaller, but they weren’t actually in the registry in the first spot that Windows was looking. If you look a couple of keys down though, you’ll see a RegOpenKey event with a SUCCESS result for something under HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node.

Doing a search by that registry key very quickly landed us at the source of the problem: an ACCESS DENIED message when Windows tried to do the cleanup for the list using the RegDeleteKey operation. Interesting!

The first thing to do was use the Jump To feature to find the key in the registry and take a look.

Sure enough, look at all those registry keys over there! No wonder it is still appearing in the list.

Just to be sure, we opened up the C:\Program Files\ directory to see if any of the files were still around, but clearly the app had been wiped off the PC already.

The solution was very simple: we just manually deleted the registry key that Windows had problems deleting. If we had received an access denied message, we could have used the Permissions setting to make sure that we have access and tried again.

Luckily the delete worked immediately, and our Uninstall Programs list was now clear.

These are just a few of the many ways that you can use Process Monitor – it is an extremely important and useful utility that will take some time to master, but once you do, it can really help you solve many problems.

Next Lesson

Starting on Monday with the next lesson, we’ll examine many of the other utilities in the SysInternals Toolkit, including some of the powerful command line tools.

4 Hidden Window Management Tricks on the Windows Desktop

Windows has quite a few features for autoamtically arranging windows, placing them side by side or tiling them on your screen. These features are a bit hidden, so you may not have noticed them.

We used Windows 7 here, but all of these tricks also work on Windows 8 except the ones that require the Task Manager. Many of the tricks also work with earlier versions of Windows.

Aero Snap for Side-by-Side Windows

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Aero Snap is extremely useful. It was introduced with Windows 7, but it’s also available on Windows 8. Microsoft says they got rid of Aero in Windows 8, but Snap is one of the Aero features still available on Windows 8.

The Snap feature makes a window take up half of your screen, making it easy to arrange two windows side by side without manually resizing and moving them around. To use Aero Snap, hold the Windows key and press the left or right arrow keys. The current window will be resized and placed at the left or right side of the screen.

You can also click a window title bar, hold down the mouse button, and drag the window’s title bar to the left or right edge of the screen. You’ll see a preview of the shape the window will become. Drop the window on the edge of the screen and it will be automatically resized to take up the appropriate side of the screen.

Maximizing, Restoring, and Minimizing Windows

You can maximize a window by dragging and dropping its title bar, too. Just drag and drop it to the top edge of the screen. . You’ll see a preview of the shape the window will become. Release your mouse button and the window will take up the entire screen. When you grab the title bar with your mouse and drag it away from the top of the screen, the window will be restored to its previous size.

With keyboard shortcuts, you can press Windows Key + Up arrow to maximize a window or press Windows Key + down arrow to restore a maximized window. Press Windows Key + down arrow again to minimize a window.

Cascade, Stack, or Tile Windows From the Taskbar

Right-click the taskbar and you’ll see three window management options — Cascade windows, Show windows stacked, and Show windows side by side. You’ll also see an “Undo” option if you right-click the taskbar after clicking one of these options.

The Cascade windows option will arrange your open windows in a “cascade,” allowing you to see all their title bars at once. This option isn’t the most practical.

The Show windows stacked option is a bit more interesting, as it allows you to arrange your windows stacked vertically on top of each other. This probably isn’t ideal for typical wide-screen displays, but it could be useful in some situations.

The Show windows side by side option is even more interesting, as it allows you to have Windows automatically arrange your open windows side-by-side with each other. It’s like Aero Snap, but it allows you to have three or more windows automatically arranged so they’re side by side — useful for multitasking on large, wide screen monitors.

Arrange Windows From the Task Manager

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You can also open the Task Manager from the taskbar’s right-click menu or press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to open it with a keyboard shortcut. The Task Manager has some integrated window management options, among its many other hidden features.

Note: Microsoft introduced a new Task Manager in Windows 8, and it doesn’t appear to have the window list pane or any window management features anymore. You can’t use the below tricks on Windows 8 — Microsoft probably removed them because they were used so rarely.

Click the Windows menu in the Task Manager and you can select Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically. Interestingly, these options seem to arrange windows in a different way than the task bar options do, tiling them both horizontally and vertically in a way that allows as many windows as possible to appear on your screen at a time.

The Applications tab displays a list of all your open application windows, and it allows you to perform some more advanced tricks. Selecting multiple windows here allows you to arrange only specific windows automatically.

For example, let’s say we wanted to make three specific windows appear side-by-side. First, we’d select three windows by holding the Ctrl key and clicking each window’s name. Next, we’d right-click a selected window and select the Tile Vertically option. Windows will automatically arrange the three windows side-by-side.

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Some of these features are more useful than others. The Snap feature is crucial for multitasking with multiple desktop application at a time. The Tile features aren’t used as frequently, but they could be very useful if you have a large monitor and need to arrange many windows on the screen so that they’re all visible at the same time.