Display Adapter Information from Registry?

[Larry Bates]

Let's see, there are tools that do what you want but you are
being told not use them?  If you use py2exe to bundle up all
your commercial software (with extensions) and then Inno Setup
to create a setup.exe file for setting everything up, nobody
ever knows about Python, extensions, etc.  This eliminates the
need to have Python (and any extensions) installed on the
target machines.  I (and many others) do this for all my
Windows software that is to be distributed.

Hope information helps.
Larry Bates


Omer Ahmad wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I've been working with python for about 6 months now, and have been
> very impressed with the size and scope of the libraries.  I have,
> however, run into a bit of a problem.
> 
> I discoverred Marc Hammonds PyWin32 extensions, (whcih are awesome)
> and Tim Golden's WMI wrapper for accessing the Windows Management
> Instrumentation  (Win32_Classes) but now I have been asked to remove
> these dependandcies and still obtain machine information from the
> registry (Windows only of course) so that we do not have to ship any
> extensions to Python with our commercial software.
> 
> I need to grab the following information:
> 
> CPU(s) Descriptions strings (for multiple processors)  (found in
> registry)
> Display Adapter description string (found in registry)
> Display Adapter Memory (found in registry)
> 
> What I'm having trouble with is to grab the DISPLAY ADAPTER version
> using python and no Win32com client (i.e. pyWin32).  I thought about
> grabbing the file name of the driver from the registry and then
> looking up the file and calculating the version number (by parsing the
> binary) but this only works if i can find the file.  I tried it out on
> a few machines with different video adapters and thsi didn't prove to
> be a reliable method.
> 
> Any suggestions? Please????
> 
> Omer Ahmad.
> 
> ps: here is the code i'm using right now (minus all the debug strings)
> 
> 
> def main():
>     """Retrieves Machine information from the registry"""
> 
>     try:
>        hHardwareReg = _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,
> "HARDWARE")
>        hDescriptionReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hHardwareReg, "DESCRIPTION")
>        hSystemReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hDescriptionReg, "SYSTEM")
>        hCentralProcessorReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hSystemReg,
> "CentralProcessor")
>        nbProcessors = _winreg.QueryInfoKey(hCentralProcessorReg)[0]
> 
>        for idxKey in range(nbProcessors):
>            #get a handle to the processor ID key
>            hProcessorIDReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hCentralProcessorReg,
> str(idxKey))
>            processorDescription =
> _winreg.QueryValueEx(hProcessorIDReg,"ProcessorNameString")[0]
>            mhz = _winreg.QueryValueEx(hProcessorIDReg, "~MHz")[0]
>            print "Processor " + str(idxKey) + ": " +
> string.lstrip(processorDescription) + " Clock Speed: " + str(mhz)
>    
>     except WindowsError:
>        print "Cannot retrieve processor information from registry!"
> 
>        #get handle to device map, reusing hardware handle
> 
>        try:
>            hDeviceMapReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hHardwareReg, "DEVICEMAP")
>            hVideoReg = _winreg.OpenKey(hDeviceMapReg, "VIDEO")
>            VideoCardString =
> _winreg.QueryValueEx(hVideoReg,"\Device\Video0")[0]
>            #Get Rid of Registry/Machine from the string
>            VideoCardStringSplit = VideoCardString.split("\\")
>            ClearnVideoCardString =
> string.join(VideoCardStringSplit[3:], "\\")
>            #Go up one level for detailed
>            VideoCardStringRoot =
> string.join(VideoCardStringSplit[3:len(VideoCardStringSplit)-1], "\\")
> 
>            #Get the graphics card information
>            hVideoCardReg = _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,
> ClearnVideoCardString)
>            VideoCardDescription  = _winreg.QueryValueEx(hVideoCardReg,
> "Device Description")[0]
>            VideoCardMemorySize = _winreg.QueryValueEx(hVideoCardReg,
> "HardwareInformation.MemorySize")[0]
> 
>            print "Graphics Card: " + VideoCardDescription
>            print "Memory: " +
> str(struct.unpack('l',VideoCardMemorySize)[0])
> 
>        except WindowsError:
>            print "Cannot Retrieve Graphics Card Name and Memory Size!"