In my operating systems course, we have to write journal entries as part of our weekly participation. It’s an unfortunate naming convention that does not inspire professionalism.

Okay, nothing “inspires” professionalism for me, but this doesn’t make it any easier. Onwards! This week the assignment was to open the command line and find out your system information, which in Windows involves typing systeminfo.


To display the system information in Windows, “systeminfo” creates a new process with the “CreateProcess” API call. These are the results of that call.

  • Processor: Intel64 Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9 GenuineIntel (or as it’s known in the consumer world: Intel Core i5)
  • Number of cores: 4
  • Memory: 8.142MB (aka 8GB, TIR I need more RAM)
  • Interesting information: My “Original install date” is 12/17/15, despite having had this computer since 2014 and Windows 10 since August 2015. I suspect that the November Windows update (also known as Threshold 2 or “why did they break EVERYTHING?!”), being a required update has altered this date.

Aside: Calling this section a “journal” has an intimacy that I’m just not sure is necessary for operating systems. Resisting the urge to start these things with “Dear diary” is one of the more difficult things I’ve had to accomplish in my programming career.

B-side: I really, really wish more online editors supported Markdown.