Forum Discussion
Msinfo32.exe not able to open .nfo files
Hello, being a first timer I hope I found a proper subcategory for my post.
Does msinfo32.exe have any known problems that still require fixing?
I have encountered quite enormous difficulties providing an .nfo file to the 3rd party vst plugin manufacturer who requested it for troubleshooting reasons. Whenever I create a system information file with msinfo23 (using save as) I´m not able to open the newly created file with msinfo32 and the plugin manufacturer´s customer service can´t either. I get a notification "System information cannot open this .nfo file. the file may be corrupt or incompatible with this version of the information system."
Today I had two chat and remote sessions with Microsoft customer service. Some registry issues were fixed in my laptop, but the problem with the msinfo32 persisted. The second customer servant concluded that msinfo32 isn´t able to handle big enough files (my .nfo:s being ~3600 kb). Is this a known issue?
Out of curiosity I opened the .nfo file in jsonformatter.org/xml-viewer. When I asked the viewer to validate the xml code it showed some errors:
It seems that there could be tag name missing for example on the line 176: there are only empty brackets <> and </>. I´m not very familiar with XML, but could this have something to do with msinfo32 seeing the .nfo file incompatible/corrupted?
3 Replies
the file size is not the problem. A ~3.6 MB .nfo is completely normal for msinfo32.
What’s breaking it is invalid XML inside the file.What’s actually happening
An .nfo generated by msinfo32 is basically an XML file.
If even one XML tag is malformed, msinfo32 will refuse to open it and show the “corrupt or incompatible” message.From what you found in the XML viewer:
- Tags like <> and </> are not valid XML
- Missing or empty tag names will break the parser
- Once that happens, msinfo32 can’t load the file, even though the file exists
So yes — those XML errors directly explain why msinfo32 can’t open the .nfo.
Why this happens
This is a known msinfo32 bug, usually triggered by:
- Certain hardware / driver entries
- Localized (non-English) strings
- Special characters written incorrectly into the XML
When msinfo32 hits one of these, it still saves the file — but saves it broken.
What you can do (practical fixes)
1. Generate the NFO in Safe Mode
This often skips problematic drivers and produces a valid file.2. Export as .txt instead of .nfo
msinfo32 → File → Export
Most vendors accept TXT and it avoids XML entirely.3. Use “Save as” on another machine
Copy the system info via remote session and generate the file elsewhere.4. Manual workaround (advanced)
Open the .nfo in a text editor and remove the invalid empty tags — msinfo32 will usually open it after that.While some tools may have limits on file size, msinfo32 is generally capable of handling large system information files, especially at a few megabytes.
Alternatively, you can use the command report.txt to generate a report file and send it to the other party.
