StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Anyone know of any free software that will show me exactly what hardware my notebook is running?

try Belarc. Gives a report of hardware, user accounts, Windows upates, and a list of all installed software.

SiSoft Sandra is, or at least used to be, free for personal use and it will give you all sorts of details and benchmarks.

I've found SIW to be handy. No installation required and a very small footprint.

CPU-Z is the standard for CPU, motherboard and memory information - it, however, lacks facilities for graphics card and peripheral info, as well as the software data. In its niche, however, it provides probably the most detailed overview while being extremely lightweight.

EDIT: For filling in those gaps, the integrated Windows System Information tool is more then sufficient.

Running dxdiag is always a good baseline for trying to work out what you've got, before installing strange, foreign programs. Start->Run->dxdiag.

Unless you don't have DirectX. It's a little harder, then.