How does spiceworks detect software

A comprehensive small network monitoring and scanning service that's easy to use and free. I'm sure I'm going to get in trouble with the CNET IT team for this, but I just set up my computer to run Spiceworks , a business network scanning and monitoring application.

Spiceworks scans a PC's local network and reports on the health of various items. You can tell which printers are running out of ink, which PCs have out-of-date virus scanners, and so on.

To monitor PCs, you need to be a systems administrator with a network administrator login for the computers in your office. I don't have that access, but I was able to peer into the data the system returned on my own PC, as well as on printers and a few open-access computers here in the office.

I found the level of information both deep and clearly presented. For example, administrators with this tool will easily be able to see which applications are installed at the company and which users are running old versions. It can also kick off Windows remote control sessions for hands-on tech support. Spiceworks also has a full help-desk system through which users can submit service requests. Some of the most difficult and tedious tasks for IT Administrators involve knowing how many installations of a product you have in your system and which license keys go with which installation.

Well that just got a little easier; you can do all of that from one screen. When Spiceworks scans your network, it will determine how many installations of a program you have in your network and, if possible, will store the license key. For more information on licenses in Spiceworks, click here.

If you created a new user account on your Mac devices for only Spiceworks to use to scan, you might notice an issue collecting software information. In order for the software to scan correctly, you just need to log in directly to the Mac devices one time using the new user account.

After that, the next scan will add the software to the device in your inventory. You might have incorrect registry or WMI namespace values. Check out the info above for details about where the scan searches for software information. For more help on software inconsistencies, check out this how-to for detailed help on getting your software correct.

Help and Support Inventory. Documentation Release Notes Product Plans. Software Inventory The last thing Spiceworks scans when it is scanning your network is the software on each device. How software is scanned Not only can Spiceworks scan your hardware assets, it can also scan your software.

Software: Spiceworks uses Windows Management Instrumentation WMI to gather detailed information about the software installed on your computers. The registry hives below are used in order to obtain software data. Services: Spiceworks will report the name and current state of all Windows services installed on each machine. Linux software discovery If you have any Linux systems on your network, Spiceworks is not going to discover the software on these systems by default.

Click Additional Settings at the bottom of the page. Remember, you can personalize your scan even more by creating special custom groups. For those devices that you need to manage on separate networks, you can use remote sites. This will have a remote Spiceworks installation scan those networks then send the results back to your central installation.

The device information scans are controlled by the schedule set on the central installation though i. Here are some of the more relevant settings:. If you have similarly named Organizational Units in your Active Directory environment, it can present a challenge to have Spiceworks scan the exact OU you want.

Spiceworks may be able to collect some limited information from the web service on the following types of devices to help you identify it:. Help and Support Inventory. Documentation Release Notes Product Plans. Using the agent-less scanner in Spiceworks Spiceworks also has a built-in agentless scanner to discover and scan the devices on your network. You might need to add additional ranges for: Devices an another location: Your network may be broken into multiple subnets.

Add their ranges so Spiceworks can pick up your remote devices. You can add the following: Single IP address: You can add one specific device on a known address e. Range of IP addresses: When you want to add a number of devices. Use a hyphen to have Spiceworks scan all devices in the range e.

Single hostname: To add one specific device. Multiple hostnames: You can add multiple hostnames to your discovery scan by separating them by a space e. Note: this setting will not discover devices that are not in Active Directory e. Workgroup computers. How do I distinguish between similarly named OUs in my scan? Add stored passwords for Spiceworks to scan devices In order to properly scan the devices on your network, Spiceworks will need to be able to communicate with them.

Find and click the type of account you need to add. Click Add Account… Fill in the fields that are displayed in the right-most column. Scan schedules Scans in Spiceworks are scheduled by groups. The types of scans are broken down into: All: This is the full network scan.