Probably my favorite depiction of a computer technician is the wizard from Jeff MacNelly's "Shoe" cartoon. A droopy-beaked fellow in a wizard's robes, complete with pointy hat and magic staff, he appears when the machine goes belly-up and the hapless peasants summon him to work his magic juju. He dances around the unresponsive little beastie, chants in odd languages, and puts the gris-gris to work. If the gods are in a good mood, the computer sits up, shakes off the bad karma, and gets back to work. If the gods are grumpy, well, then, that's a different story. Meanwhile, the hapless user stands back, giving the shaman plenty of room to work, offering him Diet Cokes and making approving sounds in his or her throat while he works his magic. Do we understand what he's doing? Of course not, we're not supposed to. This is high magic, after all.

If you want to train to be a wizard, more power to you. You won't learn it from me. (That's why I send some of the more wizardly questions to Vince at 5 Star Support -- he's a full-blown magician, complete with crystal ball and everything.) But if you'd like a peek under the hood of the beast, and a glimpse at the arcane workings of the magic juju, there are two tools out there that will give you a peek at the Other Side.

Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a wonderful little toy, free for the download from www.3bsoftware.com/ or from www.sisoftware.co.uk/. I'm not that knowledgeable on its history, but I do know that it first appeared on the freeware market several years ago as an offering from a British educational site. It immediately drew notice as being one of the most powerful and informative programs of its kind, and has long been recommended by various gurus and wizards as one of the best freebies available on the Net. (The makers of Sandra have released a Professional version as well, which costs $29, but you and I can be well and thoroughly buffaloed with the amount of information provided by the free Standard version. If you have a use for the extra info provided by the Pro version, you'll know it.) It's strictly a Windows 9x tool; Sandra doesn't work with the NT family or Win 2K, nor will it work with the upcoming Win XP system. What does it do? Well, you download it, install it (very simple, just follow the bouncing wizard), and when activated, you're given a Control Panel-like screen of options. If you double-click on the second module, "System Summary" (the first module allows you to add new ones, which we aren't going to worry with until we figure out what the present ones do), you're presented with a screen that tells all sorts of general info about your machine: name, processor, mainboard/BIOS, video system, drives, peripherals, multimedia, communications, printer/fax, operating system(s), and network adapters. And that's just the opening screen of a single module -- you have 60 modules to play with. (Note: some of the modules are disabled in the Standard edition. You'll have to buy the Pro edition to make all of them functional.) SiSoft releases updates every few months, including new modules on occasion, so it's worth checking back every now and then. So what good does it do us ignorant peasant types to have Sandra taking up our precious disk space? Well, for one thing, someone who knows what they're doing can use Sandra to analyze your computer and locate problems. But even better, you and I can use Sandra as a tool to learn more about what's going on underneath the hood of the mechanical beastie. It's not designed as an educational tool, so it won't make it particularly easy on you to figure out what exactly a particular term or feature means, but if you want to know what makes your computer tick, Sandra can offer you a view from the inside. Warning: although Sandra is strictly a diagnostic tool, it does interact somewhat with the inner functions of your computer. When, for example, it says to wait for a few minutes without moving the mouse or punching keys, it means what it says. And on rare occasions, Sandra will crash your computer and force a restart. It's all good....

Sandra is an excellent diagnostic tool and a fine introduction to the arcane workings of your Windows-driven computer. Once Sandra starts making some sense to you, you may be ready to step up and deal with AMIDiag. The AMIDiag family of programs are probably the most reliable and thorough diagnostic programs on the market, and unlike Sandra, they don't come free -- the new version, which bundles the latest AMIDiag for DOS and the new AMIDiag for Windows on the same CD, costs us poor saps $99. (Thanks to Stacey of AMI for sending me a review copy, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. I'm cheap.) A good question to ask the wizard who is grunting and chanting over your machine is, "Are you gonna use the AMI Diagnostic program to help you find out what's going on?" He may say yes or no, but if he acts as if he's never heard of it -- or worse, he blows it off and says &qupt;Why would I use such a lame program?" get rid of this guy. The AMI Diagnostic series is the gold standard, and techies across the world fall at its feet and kiss its little virtual toes for the wonders it can produce. You can find out lots more at www.ami.com/ . AMI for DOS works with any Pentium-based PC running DOS 5.0 or later; the Windows version functions under Windows 9x, ME, NT, and 2000.

It's not as simple to set up as Sandra, though it's not too tough if you read the QuickStart guide that AMI thoughtfully provides. I did the quick and easy setup of the Windows version only, though if you really want thorough diagnostic capability, you should install both Windows and DOS versions, as the DOS version does things the Windows version will not do. (But then you can't access the DOS version through Windows.) I'd suggest taking a good look at the manuals, available as .PDF files on the installation CD, before you do much else. Once you have "WinAMI" (my nickame, not the company's) installed, you should create a shortcut on your Desktop to WINDIAG.EXE (if you accepted the install defaults, it's located in the AMI folder under Program Files). Sandra installs desktop shortcuts for you, but Sandra is more of a user- and novice-friendly program than WinAMI. When you crank this program up, you're given a huge screen full of tabs -- OS Information, Motherboard, Processor, Memory, Drives, etc. etc. etc. You can click any tab to get lots and lots of arcane information on each area of your computer, probably including lots of things that you and I don't understand. That's as it should be -- after all, we aren't certified wizards. At the top you're given several "CoolBars," allowing you access to other areas of information provision -- System Info, System Diagnostics, Trouble Ticket (which generates an HTML/XML file with the appropriate system and diagnostic information and results of diagnostic tests), Interactive Diagnostics, and Additional Tools, which let you access other Windows tools such as Dr. Watson, ScanDisk, the Registry Editor, etc. The screen setup is fairly close to the standard Windows/MSIE setup, so experienced Windows users will know where to go for what information without too much confusion. You'll quickly find that there are lots of diagnostic tests that WinAMI will perform that the Standard edition of Sandra will not. Hence, more things you can find out about your machine, and more tests that techies can perform to figure out why your machine won't dance the bossa nova any more. Again, like Sandra, WinAMI is doing strange and arcane things to your machine; you would do best to follow the instructions of each test to the letter, and not interrupt the goings-on until they are done. Those with short attention spans who move to cancel a test after ten seconds of perceived inactivity will do well to leave both of these programs alone and go back to playing DragonballZ -- neither of these programs are toys.

I've barely scratched the surface of what these programs will do. (For example, AMIDiag gives you the option to make a bootable floppy disk for times when your machine really goes south -- you can use the boot disk to access AMIDiag and hopefully figure out what's going on.) Both of them are worthy additions to your computer. If you don't care what makes your machine tick, you should still download and install Sandra so that when disaster strikes, the wizard who gets to dance around your machine will have it for diagnostic purposes. Sandra is also a good place to start finding out about the inner machinations of your PC. AMIDiag is a more serious tool, for more serious users. Novices may not get enough out of it to make the $99 outlay worthwhile; the more intrepid user, or the serious geeks among us, will see the $99 as a bargain for all the information and diagnostic tools AMIDiag provides them with. (And believe me, you will win immense brownie points with the local Wizards' Guild if, when they come to fix your unresponsive beastie, you can just hand them the AMI floppy and say, "This might be of some use.") You should definitely have one or the other installed on your computer. Get to it!