GDIView

GDIView is a tiny and portable piece of software that enables you to examine GDI handles opened by every process, such as brushes, pens, fonts and bitmaps. It comes loaded with intuitive options that can be figured out by all user levels.

No installation required

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can drop the app files in any part of the disk and just click the executable to launch GDIView. Another possibility is to keep it stored on a USB flash drive, in order to directly run it on any PC with minimum effort and no previous installers. More importantly, it doesn't modify Windows registry settings.

Straightforward interface and options

The user-friendly GUI consists of a normal window with a plain and simple structure, where all active processes are listed, so you can check out the name, pen, extended pen, brush, bitmap, font, palette, region, total GDI, and other information on each item.

Examine and save information

Clicking an entry from the list reveals additional details, namely the handle, object type, kernel address, and extended information. You can select one or more items and compile their data into HTML reports or save it as TXT, CSV, HTML or XML files.

Customize app settings

It's possible to use a search function to track down a particular item when dealing with large amounts of data, enable automatic refresh mode and set the frequency, make the frame stay on top of other windows, create a systray icon for quick access, reset the last counters, or run GDIView with administrative rights.

Evaluation and conclusion

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the software application didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It had minimal impact on computer performance, running on low CPU and RAM.
To sum it up, GDIView offers a clear-cut solution for studying GDI-related information, and it can be used with ease by anyone.