15-Minute Reviews :: ASTRA32 v1.54

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is ASTRA32 version 1.54 by Sysinfo Lab – An application to help you find out much about your system as well as assist you in rectifying any driver issues that may exist.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“ASTRA32 – Advanced System Information Tool is an ideal solution for providing comprehensive information about the configuration of your system. Not only does ASTRA32 provide a detailed analysis of your system it also offers diagnostics and comes with some powerful unique features such as a Drivers Troubleshooter and a quick HDD Health Status checker.

You will appreciate the accuracy with which ASTRA32 acquires the information about the detected devices as it mostly refers directly to the hardware not to the Windows Registry. ASTRA32 uncovers even undocumented data. You can be sure that the obtained information about the computer hardware and device operational modes is precise irrespective of the installed drivers.”

Quick Pros

• Information arranged in a simple-to-use tree layout
• Provides a significant amount of information on system in one location
• Driver Troubleshooter worked well
• Report functionality handy way to keep a record of what system setup is
• USB drive support possible

Quick Cons

• Some information missing or misreported
• Analysis time was fairly slow

Expansion

During your launch of this application, you are greeted with a dialog. On this screen there is three buttons, “Continue”, “Troubleshooting”, or “Exit”. While the first and last is self-explanatory, the “Troubleshooting” one may not be clear. This one is for if for some reason the application crashes or hangs during analysis so that you can disable or enable certain tests. When you follow “Continue”, you arrive at another splash screen with a progress bar which is where the system analysis occurs. System analysis was fairly slow, though not too bad; It takes about 40 seconds on my test system. Once this is completed, you’re greeted by a very straightforward window to review the gathered information. A tree display on the left side of the window; The information appears to the right of the tree in an easy to read format; As well as a row of buttons to make navigation to more common functions at the top.

Analysis was very thorough and provided a lot of information; Too much to list here. Everything from BIOS and motherboard, to CPU and memory, as well as internal and external devices; They all seem to have a place here. Most of it was accurate; However, I did have a few information parts missing (Being listed as Unknown, such as my motherboard make and model), and worse, some misreported in two places. It reported that my test system does not have USB support; It is enabled in the BIOS, so I’m not sure what happened there. It also said in the DMI CPU Info that my processor was a 65535MHz CPU, even though it is reported correctly on the CPU Info page; This could be more due to the detection method as opposed to the software itself however.

Driver troubleshooter is an interesting concept. While my testing was limited on this aspect, the fact that you can get the device name and manufacturer to be able to hunt down the appropriate (or fixed) drivers to make the device work is a good feature, so long as it works in all cases. I suppose that this does rely on the manufacturer putting usable information in the card for identifying purposes though, so your mileage may vary with this function. There is also a HDD Diagnostics which will report back the health status of SMART-enabled drives; Yet another tool included to cut down on the number of tools needed.

There are some professional-level tools included with the application as well. There is the reporting functionality which may be a great tool for those looking to inventory an office, school or home for their computer hardware; Create a report on each system and away you go. As well, while not advertised in the application or on Giveaway of the Day but able to be ascertained from the author’s site is USB drive support, labeled as ‘able to run without installation’. This could be useful for again speeding the process of inventorying for example, or even for professionals at a client’s location to be able to keep handy their information for tech support calls or otherwise. There is also a few other functions too that learn towards use in the above-mentioned methods including batching (Could be used across a network with a script for example).

Final Verdict

This is a very handy all-in-one informational tool. The layout is intelligent and seems to work fairly well, except the two mis-reports which were minor. Granted, there are a lot of other free tools out there, this one is easy to use and provides a lot of information that in other applications you may need 2 or 3 applications to find out. For free, this application is pretty good and may be useful for a one-time (or few-time) use. As for paying for this title, I feel that $29.95 for a home license is just too steep for a low-use application (There are free SMART drive tools out there, removing the effectiveness of this aspect.) For a professional however, as long as the misreports get cleared up quickly and the ‘Unknowns’ start disappearing, this may become a good tool for a pro. Check out here for licensing on professional and engineer versions.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, September 26, 2007