WMI = Windows Management Instrumentation
Microsoft has an extensive set of API's that are wide open for gathering 
information on windows machines. Everything form performance, installing 
applications, file system, etc...

You can use VBScript and JScript to gather WMI information from windows 
machines.
Other languages can gather information as well. you just need to address 
the WMI interface.
Websites:
http://cwashington.netreach.net

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnclinic/html/scripting06112002.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/wmi_reference.asp

Very few will agree with me but M$ did a good job with WMI it's complex 
but it works.

Sam.

blawrence at qwest.net wrote:

>Fellow Linux users,
>
>I'd like to monitor a few dozen headless Windows XP boxes and generate some
>simple graphs to show CPU, memory, threads, and disk usage. The test
>software running on these boxes is compiled specifically for Windows and I
>have no option to migrate them to Linux or to use an OS emulator.
>
>Initially I thought about using a combination of MRTG, RRDTool, and the
>built-in SNMP agent on Windows. I found this site, http://wmiex.msft.net/,
>that looks promising but I'm not sure how to configure the WMI and SNMP
>components of Windows.
>
>I've also looked into using OpenNMS to generate the graphs although it
>would be a lot of work to setup the server. I haven't seen any examples of
>this working with Windows so I'm not sure if this is even an option.
>
>Does anyone have any experience in this area?
>
>Thanks,
>Brian Lawrence
>
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