A system and method for identifying problems with a system configuration may evaluate system configuration information against one or more configuration recommendations or rules. The evaluated system configuration may include various types of software and hardware components which may impact the operations of the computer system. Rules may be any information identifying an issue or describing a recommended configuration for the software or hardware component. A knowledge-based language or a programming language analyzer may be used to specify the rules. In one embodiment, a rules engine may be used as part of the problem detection application to evaluate configuration data against associated rules. A rules engine may be any mechanism used to recognize, interpret and process the configuration data against the rules. The results of the evaluation process may be stored for further analysis.