How to succeed

If you were given a sytem or systems to restore & had absolutely no software, what programs or utilities would you use to gather information about drivers, specs, etc before writing zeros to the hard drive & how would you use them. I have friends giving me their old computers & I would like to begin doing this.
Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Well you can check MG for some software that would gather information. I know DriverMax will gather all the driver information and store it i n a directory so that you can reinstall the drivers without looking all over the place.

Or you can turn it into a Linux box and install Linux on it. Then you wouldn't have to worry about purchasing anything for it. I turned an older on I got from work into a Linux box running Knoppix and Nintendo emulation! I love it!!

 

How do you do that, the Linux thing? Anybody familiar with "windrvexpert" ?