I am new to Windows-I just need to figure out some stuff for work
I need to make a correspondence table of registry keys, e.g.

Processors->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\SYSTEM\ CENTRAL_PROCESSOR\0...n \ProcessorNameString

which will tell us each processor on the machine, e.g. PIII at 1000

Now I was told you can also find out from the registry:

-the RAM
-Manufacturer(e.g. Dell)
-Free disk space
-PC name
-User name(s)
-INSTALLED SW
-Patches+Hotfixes
-Recent changes
Any idea where these are in the registry?

Why do you need to get it from the registry, when it's much easier to find elsewhere?I was asked to do a policy check in the company
How else do you propose to find this info? from the control panel->system?How about using Belarc Advisor:
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.htmlI did look up Belarc, (Belarc itself is not usable- says cannot be used in a commercial environment, and they offer solutions for a fee).
The reasons I don't want to take that path is:
1) Cost and time: purchase needs to be approved and the first question will be "can it be done another way". Even if approved, the whole process is
extremely slow, way past my deadlines.
2) Security. I am always reluctant to get an exe and install it-you never know what else it might be doing. Probably I'm too cautious, but if something goes wrong, it will blow up on me.
3) I can do many of the tasks with something like perls: Win32TiedRegistry
(tried it and will tell me OS version, HW, SW etc): It's just that I cannot find some of them. This might be either because I don't know where to look
(which is the point of the post), or because they are not in the registry, but somewhere else?Quote

Security. I am always reluctant to get an exe and install it-you never know what else it might be doing.