================================================================================ CIB PC REPORTER - USER GUIDE Computer Info Bits Limited - computerinfobits.com ================================================================================ CIB PC Reporter is a Windows desktop application that gathers detailed information about your computer's hardware, monitors live temperatures and fan speeds, visualises disk usage, checks drive health, and produces clean, shareable reports. Crash Trace can also record in the background, catch freezes, crashes and restarts when they happen, and correlate the readings with Windows crash and reliability records. This guide explains every feature and how to use it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. GETTING STARTED -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Launch "CIB PC Reporter". The main window opens with a row of tabs across the top and an Export / Refresh button pair in the top-right corner. - The app reads most information automatically the moment it starts. A few slower data sets (the full driver list, the power plan, the AI/NPU and TPM details) load quietly in the background a second or two after launch. - ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS (optional): PC Reporter starts normally without a UAC prompt. Some sensors and SMART health data are only available with administrator rights. Use the "Restart as administrator" button in the yellow notice when you need the most complete health report. - LIVE DATA: Temperatures, fan speeds, load and power readings refresh automatically every few seconds while the app is open. - REFRESH BUTTON (top-right): Forces an immediate re-read of all hardware and re-checks the recommendations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. THE TABS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The application is organised into eight tabs: Overview A summary of the whole system at a glance. Temps & Fans Live temperature and fan-speed monitoring. Hardware Details Full breakdown of CPU, GPU, memory and storage. Disk Usage A visual map of what is using space on a drive. Drivers & Power Installed device drivers and the active power plan. Diagnostic Session Records a problem and analyses sustained readings. Crash Trace Correlates crash, freeze and restart evidence. Recommendations Automatic suggestions based on what was detected. Each tab is described below. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.1 OVERVIEW -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Overview tab shows the headline information for your PC in one place: - Operating system, build number and motherboard. - CPU model, core/thread count, current load and temperature. - Graphics card(s) with load, core temperature and video memory. Hot spot and memory temperatures appear separately when the GPU reports them. - Installed memory (RAM): total, in-use, speed and channel configuration. - Storage devices with capacity and free space. Use this tab for a quick health check or to read off your main specifications. The Want More Free PC Tools card is text-only. It introduces optional calculators for PSU sizing, CPU and GPU balance, airflow, FPS, monitors and upgrade planning. It also mentions the portable standalone edition of PC Reporter, which runs without installation. Search Google for Computer Info Bits to explore them. The app does not open the Computer Info Bits website. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.2 TEMPS & FANS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This tab is a live monitor. It lists every temperature sensor the app can read - CPU package and individual cores, GPU core, GPU hot spot, GPU memory, storage drives and motherboard sensors - alongside every fan-speed sensor or control channel the hardware reports. The main GPU temperature is always the core or edge reading. Hot spot and memory temperatures are labeled separately because they normally run at different temperatures and must not be compared with the GPU core warning. - Readings update automatically every few seconds. - Colour and bar indicators show how close a component is to its safe limit (cool / normal / warm / hot). - A fan shown as "Stopped" is either idle (zero-RPM mode under low load) or not reporting a speed. - The number of reported fan channels may be lower than the number of physical fans. Graphics cards often connect two or more fans to the same speed channel, so three visible fans may correctly appear as one or two readings. Note: The range of sensors visible depends on your motherboard, chipset and whether the app is running as administrator. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.3 HARDWARE DETAILS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A complete, itemised breakdown of the system's core components: - CPU: model, cores, threads, frequency, load, package and maximum core temperatures and package power draw. - GPU(s): model, load, temperature, total and used video memory, core clock and power. - Memory: total capacity, amount used, speed, number of slots and channel configuration (single / dual / quad channel). - Storage: each drive with its capacity, free space, temperature and - where available - SMART health attributes and an overall health score (Good / Fair / Poor / Critical). - AI & Security: Whether a dedicated AI processor (NPU) was found, the AI-relevant CPU instruction sets your processor supports, and your TPM (Trusted Platform Module) version, status and manufacturer. See section 3 for what each of these means. SMART health: For SSDs/NVMe drives the score is based on wear level and spare capacity; for traditional hard drives it is based on reallocated/pending sectors and power-on hours. "Unknown" means the drive did not provide enough health data to score (often the case without administrator rights). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.4 DISK USAGE (visual disk-space map) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This tab shows what is taking up space on a drive, drawn as a "treemap" - a grid of coloured rectangles where the size of each rectangle is proportional to the amount of space that folder uses. It is similar in purpose to tools such as WinDirStat. HOW TO USE: 1. Choose a drive from the "Drive:" dropdown at the top. IMPORTANT: No drive is scanned until you select one. This keeps the application fast to start. As soon as you pick a drive, the scan begins automatically and the map fills in as folders are measured. 2. Watch the map build. A thin progress bar runs across the top while the scan is in progress, and the status text at the bottom-right shows how many top-level items have been found. 3. Read the map: - Each rectangle is one top-level folder (or "[Files at root]" for loose files sitting directly on the drive). - Bigger rectangle = more space used. - Hover over any rectangle to see its name, size and percentage. - The legend along the bottom lists each folder with its colour and size. 4. Drill down: Click a rectangle to open a pop-up listing the sub-folders inside it, sorted by size, so you can see exactly where the space has gone. Click the dark area around the pop-up (or the X) to close it. 5. Right-click a rectangle for shortcuts: - Open in Explorer - Open in Terminal (Windows Terminal, or Command Prompt as a fallback) - Open in PowerShell RESCAN: The result for each drive is remembered for the session, so switching back to a drive you have already scanned is instant. Click the "Rescan" button to force a fresh measurement (for example, after deleting files). Tip: Run as administrator so the scan can measure protected system folders. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.5 DRIVERS & POWER -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - DRIVERS: A compact table of installed device drivers, similar to Device Manager. It shows the device, device type, provider, version, manufacturer date, status and INF file. Select a column heading to sort. Search across the driver details, show only devices needing attention, or group by device type, provider or status. Select a row to see its device ID and signer. A driver date more than two years old is labelled "Older date." This does not automatically mean the driver is outdated or unsafe. Some stable devices use old manufacturer dates because no newer driver is needed. The Attention only filter is reserved for unsigned drivers and device errors. This list loads in the background shortly after the app starts, because reading every driver from Windows can take a few seconds. - POWER: The currently active Windows power plan (for example Balanced, Power saver, High performance or Ultimate). The Recommendations tab warns when Power saver is actively reducing performance. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.6 DIAGNOSTIC SESSION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This tab records the computer while a slowdown, stutter, heat problem or other intermittent issue happens. It turns live readings into evidence over time. HOW TO USE: 1. Click "Start recording". 2. Use the computer normally and reproduce the problem. 3. Click "Stop and analyze". The chart keeps CPU and GPU load, CPU and GPU temperature, and RAM usage on the same timeline. Summary cards show the elapsed time, average CPU load, and peak temperature and memory readings. After the recording stops, PC Reporter reports sustained problems instead of brief spikes. It also lists the processes that reached the highest CPU, memory and disk activity during the session. Recordings stop automatically after one hour to keep memory use bounded. A completed session is included automatically in HTML and PDF reports. Click "Clear" to discard it and begin a fresh recording. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.7 CRASH TRACE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crash Trace brings together the evidence Windows leaves around blue screens, application crashes, freezes, hard shutdowns and unexpected restarts. It ranks possible causes with supporting evidence and a Low, Medium or High confidence label. Confidence describes the strength of the evidence. It does not promise that a cause has been proven. BACKGROUND RECORDING: - Background recording is off until you turn it on in the Crash Trace tab. PC Reporter asks you to confirm first. - Once on, a small recorder starts with Windows and keeps running after you close PC Reporter. It has no window. The Crash Trace tab shows when it last took a reading and how much memory it uses. - Every 5 seconds it saves a short reading of CPU and memory use and the app in front. Every 15 seconds it saves a detailed reading with CPU and GPU load and temperature, free storage space, and a small list of the busiest processes. CPU temperature is only available when Windows allows it without administrator rights, which on most PCs it does not. - It catches problems Windows never logs: Freezes: the recorder checks the time once a second. If the whole PC stops for several seconds while it is awake and in use, and Windows was not going to sleep or standby, it saves a freeze incident. Apps that stop responding: if the app in front stops responding for 10 seconds or more, it is saved even when the app recovers on its own. Network drops: lost and restored connections appear in the timeline. - About once a minute it also checks Windows for crashes, blue screens, graphics driver resets and hardware errors, and saves them as incidents with the readings from the 30 minutes before. Programs that crash in the background without being used are kept as evidence instead of incidents. - After an unexpected restart, the incident is dated to the recorder's last reading before the PC went down, and it is only saved when Windows also confirms an unexpected shutdown or bugcheck. - Turn it off in the Crash Trace tab, or in Windows Settings under Apps > Startup. The standalone version must be kept in a permanent folder on the PC, not on a USB drive or inside a zip file, because Windows starts it from there. WINDOWS EVIDENCE: Select "Scan recent Windows history" to check the last seven days. Crash Trace reads relevant Windows System and Application events, reliability records, bugcheck information, application faults and hangs, hardware error reports, driver and device errors, resource exhaustion, display driver resets, storage and file system warnings, and available crash dump file names. It records dump metadata only. It does not copy or read memory dump contents. The incident view contains a time-ordered timeline, ranked likely causes, supporting Windows records, pre-incident performance readings when available, system context, practical next steps, and any collection limits Windows reported. Select Export incident to create a ZIP with an HTML report and JSON data for a technician or AI analysis. PC Reporter never uploads it. PRIVACY AND STORAGE: Crash Trace does not collect window titles, command lines, file listings, browser history, credentials, hardware serial numbers or memory dump contents. User profile and computer names found in Windows messages are replaced before storage. It keeps no more than 10 incidents for 30 days. Background readings are kept for 3 days and never more than 150 MB, then deleted. Delete one incident or clear them all from the Crash Trace tab at any time. Nothing is uploaded. If background recording was off before a failure, the Windows history scan can still find events and reliability data, but it cannot recreate the missing readings from before the incident. COMPUTER INFO BITS PRO: Select "Get Pro" at the top of the window to see what Pro adds or to sign in. Pro is a Computer Info Bits subscription that also covers the premium tools on computerinfobits.com. In Crash Trace it adds: - A full year of history, up to 100 incidents, instead of 30 days and 10. - Repeating problems: a panel above your incidents that shows what they have in common, such as the same cause, the same app or the same stop code. Without Pro, the panel shows how many repeating problems were found. - Report branding: a business name, contact line and logo at the top of exported incident reports. To sign in, enter the license key from your Pro receipt email and select Activate. PC Reporter keeps a sign-in token, encrypted for your Windows account, and checks it with computerinfobits.com about twice a day. It keeps working offline for up to two weeks between checks. Each PC takes one of the places your key allows, like a browser does. Select "Sign out on this PC" in the Pro window to free it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.8 RECOMMENDATIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The app analyses everything it detected and lists practical suggestions, each marked by severity: Critical Needs attention soon (e.g. failing drive health, very high temps). Warning Worth looking into (e.g. low free disk space, an old driver, a power plan limiting performance). Info General advice and observations. Each item includes a short description and a suggested action. Temperature, memory-pressure and bottleneck findings must continue across several readings, so one short spike does not create a misleading warning. The header shows how many recent readings were used. If sensors are unavailable, the app says that the health check is limited instead of claiming the system is healthy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. AI CAPABILITIES & TPM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both the Hardware Details tab and the exported reports include an "AI & Security" section with: - NPU / AI Accelerator: Whether a dedicated AI processor (NPU) was found, and its name. Modern "AI PC" chips include one - for example Intel Core Ultra ("Intel AI Boost"), AMD Ryzen AI (XDNA / IPU) and Qualcomm Snapdragon X (Hexagon). "Not detected" means no separate NPU was found. - CPU AI Instructions: The AI-relevant instruction sets your processor supports (such as AVX2, AVX-VNNI and AVX-512). These accelerate AI and machine-learning workloads that run on the CPU itself. - TPM (Trusted Platform Module): Whether a TPM is present, its version (for example 2.0), whether it is enabled, and its manufacturer. A working TPM 2.0 is required for Windows 11 and for features such as BitLocker. These details appear in the Hardware Details tab and in the HTML and PDF reports (see section 4). The NPU and TPM details load in the background a second or two after the app starts. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. EXPORTING & SHARING -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click the "Export" button (top-right) for a menu of output options: - Save as HTML Report - A styled web-page report covering the system, CPU, AI & security (NPU / AI instructions / TPM), GPU(s), memory, storage with SMART data, and the recommendations. A completed diagnostic session adds its chart, findings and top processes. Opens automatically after saving. - Save as PDF Report - The same report as a print-ready PDF document. - Save as PNG Screenshot - An image of the current application window exactly as shown on screen. - Copy Summary to Clipboard - A short plain-text summary of your key specs, ready to paste anywhere. - Share on X / LinkedIn / WhatsApp / Reddit - Opens the chosen service in your browser with a ready-made post of your PC specs. Reports are saved with a dated file name (e.g. CIB-PC-Report-YYYY-MM-DD) to a location you choose. Crash Trace incident exports are separate ZIP packages. Each contains a human- readable HTML report and structured JSON, with clear confidence labels and the evidence behind each possible cause. Tip: For the most complete report - including full SMART drive health and all sensors - run the app as administrator before exporting. FEEDBACK AND SUPPORT PACKAGE: The feedback window can create an optional ZIP package for the user to review and attach to an email. PC Reporter never uploads this package automatically. It contains the report, recommendations, completed session data and a sanitized error log. It excludes file listings, credentials, browser history and hardware serial numbers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. TROUBLESHOOTING -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Some temperatures, fans or drive health data are missing. A: Use the "Restart as administrator" button in the yellow notice. Availability also depends on your motherboard and hardware support. Q: The driver list / power plan / AI / TPM details are blank right after launch. A: They load in the background a second or two after start. Give it a moment, or press Refresh. Q: The Disk Usage tab is empty. A: That is expected until you choose a drive from the dropdown. Selecting a drive starts the scan automatically. Q: A disk scan looks lower than the drive's used space. A: Folders the app cannot access (protected/system locations) are skipped. Running as administrator gives a more complete measurement. Q: NPU shows "Not detected" but I have a new PC. A: Only PCs with a dedicated AI processor (NPU) report one. Many systems still accelerate AI through CPU instructions instead - check the "CPU AI Instructions" line in the report. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CIB PC Reporter Developed by: Computer Info Bits Limited (c) Computer Info Bits Limited - computerinfobits.com The application's version number is shown in the bottom-left status bar. Open-source components: PC Reporter includes LibreHardwareMonitorLib and a modified DiskInfoToolkit, both licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. Where to get their source code: https://computerinfobits.com/licenses/pc-reporter-open-source.txt ================================================================================