These days you may have used a program named Speccy for checking the configuration of your computer. In the early 1990s, one could possibly run Microsoft Diagnostics (the MSD command) included with MS-DOS and checked configuration files for the same purpose.
A much lesser known utility known as Microsoft Configuration Specialist was available via online distribution.
A couple of developers, Barry Nolte and Aaron Bregel, were responsible for the creation of this unsupported utility program designed for Windows 3.1. The Help file outlines that this utility is to assist with determining the system configuration without the need to delve into INI, SYS, or BAT files.
Microsoft Configuration Specialist 2.1.
A number of categories can be selected such as for video, fonts, and multimedia. Interestingly there’s a dedicated category specifically for an iteration of Windows 3.1, known as Windows for Pen Computing 1.0.
Selecting the question mark button on the toolbar goes directly to the relevant section in the help file, offering details on the various fields for the selected category. There’s also the option to export all or some of the information into an ASC file – basically a text file.
Easily determine version of the sound card drivers, and wavetable sound capability.
By design, the main shortcoming is that much of the information concerning hardware is only as good as the drivers installed. It did however assist with identifying driver versions and hardware supported features.
Download Microsoft Configuration Specialist 2.1
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