Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.0

Today Microsoft released the 2.0 version of the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment (WVHA) tool. This tool is the second generation of Microsoft's secure agent-less inventory and assessment tool with rich reporting capabilities designed to evaluate your organizations readiness for deploying Windows Vista.

Download

What's New in 2.0

• Reporting on up to 25,000 workstation on a single run
• Reporting on Office 2007 capabilities
• Selective Active Directory Scanning (ability to select certain Domains/OUs)
• Text file import of computer names

Requirements

• Admin rights on local workstation
• Admin rights on remote workstation
• Account with rights to Active Directory domain where computers are located
• Ports 135 and 139 open on remote workstation
• SQL MSDE 2005

Setup 

The installation is straight forward and easy. After downloading the WVHA setup, it will guide you through the installation steps via a short wizard. As part of the install you will need to download and install SQL MSDE 2005 SP2, or point to an existing download of SQL. The installation will create a local instance of SQL used for storing the collected information.

Running the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool

The first time you run the hardware assessment tool you will need to create a database, subsequent reports can use this existing database, or you can create a new one created if reporting for different purposes.

Create a new database

Select the actions you wish to perform

Select how you want to generate the list of computers.  You can use a number of discovery methods including Active Directory, a file you have created, or manually entering individual computers.

Preparing reports

Your Done! You can find your reports in your "Documents" folder under a Windows Vista Hardware Assessment folder.

 Reporting

The resulting reports include rich array of information on your computers including a thorough hardware evaluation with remediation recommendations, device driver availability, and a summary of the top installed software in your organization.

Summary report

Hardware recommendations

Device Drivers Availability

Summary

If you are considering a deployment of Windows Vista and aren't sure where to start the wealth of knowledge that this utility can provide will be invaluable.  Take it for a spin, you might just be surprised how many of your machines can run Windows Vista.