Before going to any data center, we are required to ensure that the Windows have its appropriate service packs and patches installed. Using the utility, srvinfo.exe from a bigger suite of tool kit, Microsoft Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools, you will be able to collect information from remote machines such as (a) services installed, running and stopped, (b) disk capacity and usage, (c) installed hotfixes, (d) their installation date and (e) installed network protocol. This are all essential information that data center officers would like to know prior the machine is being plug into the network. What's Microsoft Windows 2003 Resource Kit Tools then? It is a set of tools to help administrators streamline management tasks such as troubleshooting operating system issues, managing Active Directory, configuring networking and security features, and automating application deployment.

After downloading available from Microsoft Download Center and installation, the utilities are stored in the following folders:

%Program Files%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools

srvinfo.exe is used in the command prompt. The options available are as followed:

• -d: Display service drivers/ services
• -ns: Hides service information
• -nf: Hides hotfix information
• -r: Displays service internal names
• -s: Displays shares
• -v: Displays version information for Exchange Server, Internet Information Services (IIS), and Microsoft SQL Server.

Type 'svrinfo' on the command line to display information about the local server. To display information about a remote server, attach \\COMPUTER_NAME to the command line. For example, to display hotfix information about computer \\BETTY and hide the service information, enter the following command:

srvinfo -ns \\BETTY

To output the list of hotfixes to a text file for the authority assessing the machine, you can use the following command.

srvinfo -ns \\BETTY >> C:\hotfix_installed.txt