A. Microsoft has a tool named GPInventory that you can use to collect Resultant Set of Policy (RSOP) and WMI information and save it to an XML or text file. You can download the tool at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1D24563D-CAC9-4017-AF14-8DD686A96540&displaylang=en . Double-click the file to install it to the C:\program files\windows resource kits\tools folder (the default).
The tool will display query results in a GUI window. To run a query against machines from Active Directory (AD), choose "Select Computers to target using Active Directory" from the Query menu. This option lets you select an organizational unit (OU) and all member machines are loaded, or read from a text file (one machine name per text file line), to allow more granular selection. After you select the machines, you select the information you want to gather via the "Select Information to gather" Query menu option as the figure shows. Next, select Run Query from the Query menu to begin the collection process and display the results, as the figure shows. You can then export the data to an XML or .txt file via the Results menu. You can also save queries for future execution.