Well there are allot system info gathering tools around but i want to try and write a simple one myself.

- OS info
- IP Address / Hostname
- Number of Hard Drives
- Number of Logical / Removeable Drives

im not really a skilled coder so i don't really know where i start, or what i need to read first.

So if i hope someone can point me in the right direction.

OS Info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....tem_version.asp

IP:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....thostname_2.asp

Drives:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....gicaldrives.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....etdrivetype.asp


There you go.

Thanks allot this should get me underway

the first resource about this should always be msdn.
there you will find all (documented) api calls with mosty code examples (often not complete though).
so next time just visit msdn and use the search function, its a programmer's playground.
if you have any problems using one api someone here is willing to help.
in the case of using network api to query remote system information you will end up asking alot I think, because I have not found one working example at msdn, it always fails with an unicode error.
they should try their samples before putting them online, but thats microsoft

It would be really interesting to see an executable that can be run from the commandline that will output information about the system into an XML document. I was actually thinking about something like this a few years back when people were posting HijackThis logs to get help with spyware. Supposing someone coded it right, they could have an online web application that let system support people help automatically clean workstations like the ones affected by spyware. Something to think about anyway.