Microsoft Diagnostics

Microsoft Diagnostics (MSD) was a software tool developed by Microsoft to assist in the diagnostics of 1990s-era computers. Users primarily deployed this tool to provide detailed technical information about the user's software and hardware and to print the gathered information, usually for use by support technicians in troubleshooting and resolving problems. The assumptions made by the program were valid until the late 1990s: it does not handle plug-and-play USB or other new technologies that appeared around 2000.
In PC DOS 6.1 and above, codice_1 provides similar functionality. Commercial alternatives include Manifest codice_2 from Quarterdeck's QEMM.
History.
codice_3 first shipped with Microsoft Word for Windows, and was later included in Windows 3, MS-DOS 6, and on the Windows 9x CD-ROMs. Because OS/2 and Windows NT contain code forked from DOS at the DOS 5 level, the versions of codice_3 included here correspond to that of that era (i.e. version 2.0).
Windows NT 3 and NT 4 have codice_5, a program with similar features. However, the DOS/Windows specific functions were replaced by similar Windows NT concerns. codice_6, included in the resource kits, provides the print functionality of codice_3 for codice_5. Since NT 5 (Windows 2000), codice_9 has been a loader for codice_10.
Usage.
Users generally started the program from the DOS Command Prompt using the command codice_11. Starting the program under a DOS window in either Windows or OS/2 shows only the DOS details allocated for that DOS session, not for the machine in general.
Scope.
Aspects of the system for which codice_3 provided technical information:
Successor software.
Microsoft replaced codice_3 with codice_10. This has similar features, but targets more recent machines. It first appeared in MS-Word, and later was distributed with Plus! for Windows 95 and Windows 98. codice_10 under Windows XP stores system history from WMI in the XML files in codice_16. In the interest of backward compatibility, codice_5 became a loader for codice_18.