Lots of free software 'audit' your hardware (listing a couple here).
- FreshDiagnose can generate a report of your system hardware
- PcWizard
There are specific tools to look at your process, graphics card etc,
- CPU-Z for the processor and motherboard details
- GPU-Z for the Graphics card details
- HDDTune for Harddisks
For a local check, you need to dig through the
Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Device Manager detail.
The other tools give you data in a little more organized manner.
They are quite small to carry in a USB pendrive usually.
I think, you could also get down to writing a VB Script to run through the registry and pull out all the details.