Free software to check your computer system information

Recently my friend has this problem, he reinstalled windows xp because malware are slowing down his PC. After the installation every thing when smoothly, in fact the PC start and work faster like never before. But the problem start here, he doesn't have the necessary software CD for his sound card driver. You might be thinking that what's the big deal, just search the internet for the driver. Unfortunately he doesn't know the manufacture of the sound card either. Thus, first he needs to find out what sound card he is using before he can search for the right driver.

There's a few way you can check your sound information directly on the Windows.
1) Go to "start" select run, then key in dxdiag & press enter. Wait for a while for the program to load, it takes some time. You'll see some of your hardware information on the first page such as processor, motherboard, ram...etc. Never mind that, click the tab "sound" & you should see your computer sound card information. This method doesn't work for my friend, it says no sound card detected.
2) Second method, go to control panel & open "system". Choose the tab "hardware" on top, then click on "device manager". Now select option sound and see what you can find.

If the above two method doesn't work for you either. Then you might need the help of third party software. There's a lot of free diagnostic software on the internet, and following two is my favourite.
1) The first one is called fresh diagnose. The software will show very detail of your computer system information unlike dxdiag on the windows which shows briefly information. Download free version of fresh diagnose at: www.freshdevices.com/freshdiag.html

2) If for any reason the above doesn't help at all. Try out this second software which I found through user recommendation on some website. The software is Belarc Advisor, as for the official download site, you'll to do the work yourself. Just search for Belarc Advisor and you should see the company website on the top result.