Desktop Info by Glenn Delahoy (C) Copyright 2005-2014 All rights reserved Description ----------- This little application displays real-time system information on your desktop. Looks like wallpaper but stays resident in memory. Perfect for quick identification and walk-by monitoring of production or test server farms. Everything is customisable. License Agreement ----------------- This software is distributed free of charge. It may be used as many times as you like, for as long as you like, in a domestic or corporate environment. You may copy and distribute copies of this program provided that you keep all original documentation including this readme.txt file with copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty intact. You may not charge money or fees for the software product to anyone except to cover distribution costs. Warranty -------- This program is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction. In no event will any copyright holder be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs). Technical Support ----------------- No guarantees whatsoever are implied that technical support will be provided or that technical support, when provided, will be accurate. This software is basically unsupported and supplied on an as-is basis. Usage ----- Just run it. You can kill it via the right click context menu or from Task Manager. Open the desktopinfo.ini file or select Configuration from the right click context menu and adjust each item in the items section to control visibility, refresh times, colours and other properties. The display updates itself automatically when you save the ini file. Options ------- There is no configuration program. Options are set by modifying the ini file in a text editor such as Notepad. The included ini file shows all the available options. Display values are relative to the primary display so if you have a dual monitor display, you may need to specify negative values for any of these depending on the display arrangement. Here are the rules for the position options: if left is specified, it is left aligned if right is specified, it is right aligned if neither left or right, it is left if both are specified, it is left if top is specified, it is top aligned if bottom is specified, it is bottom aligned if neither top or bottom, it is top if both are specified, it is top if font size is not specified, it is 8 if font size is less than 6, it is 8 if width is not specified, it is half the primary monitor width height is always the number of items fontface The name of the font. fontsize The size of the font. cleartype Enables/disables ClearType for the font. ssfontsize The font size in screen saver mode. formcolor Background colour. If /f is used 000000 is black background, otherwise 000000 is transparent background. contextmenu Enables/disables the right click context menu. allowdrag Enables/disables the ability to drag the form. If the /f option is used the form is always draggable. offset Enables/disables the display offset of the network adapter, fixed disk and printer sub-items. language File name containing alternate display text for the items. msnstatus Enables option to update msn status. inimonitortime How often to check for dekstopinfo.ini changes. log Write debug information to the specified log file. Colours ------- Colours are specified as a six character bgr (reverse rgb) hexadecimal number. The first two characters represent the level of blue, the second represent the level of green, the third two represent the level of red. Each element has a range of 00-ff (0-255). ff0000 is blue, 00ff00 is green, 0000ff is red. ffffff is white (all colour elements at maximum), 000000 is black (all colour elements are off). Items ----- The items section in the ini file controls the state of each info item. Each item contains a comma delimited list of key:value pairs. key value --- ----- active : a value of 0 is off, 1 is on interval : a value in seconds where 0 means never refresh color : a bgr value as defined above chart : chart type to display where 0 = no chart, 1 = bar chart, 2 = line chart. See below for items that have charts. threshold : the value where the item text will change colour tcolor : the new text colour when the value reaches the threshold value style : font style where b is bold, i is italic, u is underline offset : for network items, a value of 0 is off, 1 is on count : for multi items, sets the maximum number of items displayed An example is: DATETIME=active:1,interval:1,color:FFFFFF where the datetime item is active, refreshed every second and the colour is white. CPU=active:1,interval:2,color:0000FF,chart:1,style:b is active, refreshed every two seconds, the colour is red, chart number 1 is displayed and the font style is bold. If an item does not have a chart, the chart value is ignored. If you don't specify an item at all, it will not display. Some items such as network adapter, fixed disk and printer control all items of that class. For example if you switch on fixed disk, all detected fixed disks are displayed including most usb disks. The display is refreshed whenever there is a hardware change notification for fixed disks or network adapters. Charts ------ Where an item has two values such as NETPACKETSRATE and DISKIO, the bar chart value will be the sum of the two values. On line charts the first value takes the colour configured for that item, the second value takes a standard brown/orange/tan kind of colour. The following items have both bar and line charts available: CPU CPUUSAGE BATTERY TOPPROCESSCPU PHYSICALRAM VIRTUALMEMORY PAGEFILE PAGEFAULTS NETCONNECTIONS NETPACKETSRATE FIXEDDISK DISKIO Thresholds ---------- Items that display values may be configured to change colour when that item reaches a given value. The following items can have threshold values: Item Threshold ---- --------- CPU percent CPUUSAGE percent TOPPROCESSCPU percent TOPPROCESSMEM MB TOPPROCESSPF count PROCESSCOUNT count PHYSICALRAM percent VIRTUALMEMORY percent PAGEFILE percent PAGEFAULTS count NETCONNECTIONS count NETPACKETSRATE rate of either value FIXEDDISK percent DISKIO rate of either value DISKQUEUE count TSSESSIONS count UNREADMAIL count Numbers ------- Several of the entries show two numbers. For example, the physical ram might show something like 528MB / 1024MB (51% used). The first number is the amount used, the second is the total. So in this case it shows 528MB used out of a total of 1024MB which equates to 51% used. The same is true for virtual memory, page file and fixed disks. You can add the option SHORTDISPLAY to the items PHYSICALRAM, VIRTUALMEMORY, PAGEFILE and FIXEDDISK. This will abbreviate the standard display. For example, the PHYSICALRAM item is normally "2052MB / 4061MB (50% used)". The abbreviated version is "2052 / 4061MB (50%)". Filters ------- The filter option will be added to selected items over the next few versions. FIXEDDISK Defines which drives will be displayed. To show only drive C: add "filter:C:". To show drives C: and E: add "filter:C:E:". FIXEDDISK=active:1,interval:10,color:FF9955,filter:C:E: File Monitors ------------- Desktop Info can monitor files and folders for changes to size, write time or version number. Add one or more items called FILE anywhere in the items section. In addition to the normal item values, add the following values: text Display name of the item type Monitor type (text, size, time, version) file File or folder name The text type will display the first line of the given text file when the last write time changes. This might be useful for monitoring semaphore or progress files created by batch processes. The size type will display the file size when the size changes. The time type will display the last write and access times when either changes. The version type will display the file version resource string when the file changes. This monitor will work for local and network files and folders. If the file or directory does not exist, the display will show "<N/A>". When monitoring a directory make sure there is no trailing backslash. This example displays the contents of the given file whenever it changes: FILE=active:1,interval:10,color:ff5555,type:text,text:Status,file:c:\temp\semaphore.txt This example shows the executable version number whenever it changes: FILE=active:1,interval:10,color:ff5555,type:version,text...
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