System information as desktop wall-paper on Remote Desktop [closed]

Asked 29/1, 2009 at 9:38 Answered 10/12, 2010 at 21:7

When opening Remote Desktop to different Windows servers, it is easy to confuse two remote desktops.

How do I get each remote server to automatically display some system information as desktop wallpaper, ie. Computer Name, Operating System, IP Address, etc.

Jonell answered 29/1, 2009 at 9:38 Comment(1)

BGInfor from sysinternals is what you want for this – Gunzburg 29/1, 2009 at 10:3

I've used BGInfo from the SysInternals guys to do this in the past.

Gorrian answered 29/1, 2009 at 9:44 Comment(0)

Nothing nearly as sophisticated, but I change the desktop colour to a fairly strong primary that is easily distinguishable. Now people say "it's on the red one", so it works as a way of simply and easily telling machines apart.

Ivey answered 29/1, 2009 at 9:52 Comment(3)

Yes, I used to use the one-server-one-colour scheme, also for my virtual machines, but it get harder when you are five people doing that. I think the best solution is both colours and something like bginfo. – Jonell 30/1, 2009 at 8:42

You are colour coding the servers, not the users... aren't you? I think bginfo is great but you still have to read it. If you have a server naming convention which makes them look similar you are still open to mistakes too (USFG0023A002 instead of USFGO023A002). Different strokes – Ivey 2/2, 2009 at 9:47

and what if the person is colourblind? lol. it's an okay-ish solution for a very small firm/business, but when working on thousands of machines on a network this just wont cut it. – Minuscule 22/10, 2014 at 9:0

There are a number of offerings for desktop widgets. Why not try the following for starters:

Best answered 29/1, 2009 at 9:45 Comment(0)

Unless I'm missing something, the easiest way to do it would be to create a desktop image for each machine listing the Computer Name, Operating System, IP Address, etc.

Assuming that you're using Windows, a more complex but cooler way to do it would be to use Rainmaker and Enigma to dynamically generate the information and embed it into the desktop. Installing and using both Rainmaker and Enigma just to get the hostname might be overkill, but you can also have it display the output from various processes so you can monitor whatever system metrics you require: free/used memory, CPU use, network traffic, what have you.

Multiparous answered 13/8, 2009 at 21:9 Comment(0)

Desktop Info shows more information and is easily configurable: http://www.glenn.delahoy.com/software/

Bordeaux answered 10/12, 2010 at 21:7 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags