Windows Tools

[[AK]Nuts]

Ages' post about booting in WinMe made me think about some of the tools I use around the office to get things up and running and I thought I would share a couple of them with you:

BART'S Network Boot Disk
One of the most commonly used floppy disks I have. Completey configurable, has the option of adding modules, such as NIC drivers and CD Drivers, allowing you to create a boot disk that can be used for tasks such as reimaging across a network or ghosting your PC to DVD. Very nice and FREE

BART'S PE CD
Another great boot disk from BART and it looks like a replacement for floppy disks when it comes to fixing windows problems, outside of windows. PE, or Preinstalled Environment, is a nice, secret little tool from MS. When you build your bootable CD or DVD, it will actually load and run Windows from the CD / RAM Drive while still giving you full NTFS access. Finally you can go in and delete files from your Windows NTFS drive without having to launch Windows. The best part of this is the additional modules that can be plugged-in: Anti Virus, USB Drivers, CD Drivers, Network Drivers, drive scan and repair utilities, everything. I recently used it for a co-workers PC that refused to load Windows. A Windows Repair from the Windows CD even failed. He was about to reimage and that would have resulted in a loss of all of his data. I created a Bart's PE Disk, loaded up and accessed his drives, then dumped all of his drive to an external 250GB firewire drive. Afterwards i simply reinstalled windows and moved his data back to the repaired PC. A very nice tool and again: FREE

Windows Cracker:
I found this one on the net a year ago and still keep a copy around. There's nothing worse than having someone change the admin password then forget it. This happens quite often on our tankers, and we would be screwed. With the .iso image, simply burn a CD and boot off it. The CD loads linux and gives you full access to the .sam, allowing you to change any and every password within Windows (NT/XP/2000+). Very nice and probably illegal in your office so be carefull. But it's saved my butt a couple of times.

TCP Viewer
Finally a simple way to see every TCP/IP connection on your PC. Track down that pesky app that is contacting the internet. Nice, small, FREE. No installation, just run the .exe from anywhere.

Process Explorer
Task Manaer not giving you enough information about processes running on your PC? Try Process Explorer for XP/NT. Nice, Small, no install, and of course: FREE


Registry Compare
Don't use WinInstall or Symantec's AI SnapShot to track changes to your registry when testing software? Here's a simple tool that allows you to compare your registry following changes. No install, small and you guessed it: FREE

Please add a list with links to tools that you use around the office or house that have saved your hinney in the past.

-Nuts

[[AK]Bribo]

Thanks for the great post, Nuts.

[[AK]FiGHT*CLuB]

http://majorgeeks.com/

Has basicly everything you ever need or couldnt find.

[Ages]

Thanks Nuts!