How to find various machine-level system information with C# .NET

The Environment class holds a range of properties that help you describe the system your app is running on. Here come some examples with inline comments:

//returns true on my PC as it is a 64-bit OS
bool is64BitOperatingSystem = Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem;
//returns the machine name, in my case ANDRAS1
string machineName = Environment.MachineName;
			
//returns information about the operating system version, build, major, minor etc.
OperatingSystem os = Environment.OSVersion;
//returns the platform id as an enumeration, in my case it's Win32NT
PlatformID platform = os.Platform;			
//the currently installed service pack, Service Pack 1 in my case
string servicePack = os.ServicePack;
//the toString version of the OS, this is "Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1" on this PC
string version = os.VersionString;

//I have 4 processors on this PC
int processorCount = Environment.ProcessorCount;

//returns 2 logical drives: C: and D:
string[] logicalDrives = Environment.GetLogicalDrives();

//this is how to find all environmental variables of the system and iterate through them
IDictionary envVars = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariables();
foreach (string key in envVars.Keys)
{
	//e.g. the JAVA_HOME env.var is set to "C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk1.7.0_51\"
	Debug.WriteLine(string.Concat("key: ", key, ": ", envVars[key]));
}

//retrieve the current CLR version, in my case it's "4.0.30319.18444"
Version clrVersion = Environment.Version;

View all posts related to diagnostics here.

Listing all performance counters on Windows with C# .NET

Performance counters in Windows can help you with finding bottlenecks in your application. There’s a long range of built-in performance counters in Windows which you can view in the Performance Monitor window:

Right-click anywhere on the larger screen to the right and select Add Counters to add your counters to the graph. The Add Counters window will show the categories first. You can then open a category and select one or more specific counters within that category. The graph will show the real-time data immediately:

Read more of this post

4 ways to enumerate processes on Windows with C# .NET

The Process object in the System.Diagnostics namespace refers to an operating-system process. This object is the entry point into enumerating the processes currently running on the OS.

This is how you can find the currently active process:

Process current = Process.GetCurrentProcess();
Console.WriteLine(current);

…which will yield the name of the process running this short test code.

Read more of this post