Most Valuable Troubleshooting Utilities/Programs

[Met44]

What's the name of that obscure little program stored on your flash drive that comes to the rescue every now and then? Or one that makes it easier to suss issues out?

How large is the total file size?

Whats it do/when do you use it?

Anything else we should know about it?

Do you have a link where one could look into it further?

Interested to learn of some good ones!

[renegade600]

not all flash drives have it. which flash drive do you have?

[Met44]

To get it going -

There are a lot of valuable ones over on microsoft's technet/sysinternals. Two from there that I use regularly are Autoruns (534 KB) and Process Explorer (3.5 MB).

Autoruns shows all of the files that run at start up, categorized into sections like Services, Known DLLs, Image Hijacks, etc. Very useful for seeing all of the executables that run when you boot the system. This also lets you enable or disable any of them.

Process Explorer is like an advanced Task Manager; it shows all of the processes currently running, the path of the file, what executable is responsible for loading it, and the path of the executable. Allows you to pause and resume any process on the fly. The main function I have used it for is finding viruses that hide behind authentic windows applications, like svchost.exe or rundll.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

[Met44]

Sorry renegade6000, my first post wasn't as clear as I meant it to be - just looking for people to post about their own utilities they have found valuable for troubleshooting. :)

[renegade600]

are you wanting help or are you just wanting to advertise what you are using

[Met44]

I am looking for people to post in a collaborative thread to make a list of helpful troubleshooting utilities. I am looking for input on things other people use.

MS doesn't really need me advertising freeware downloads.

[oracle128]

Aside from Process Explorer, SIW (http://www.gtopala.com/) is another good one. It shows a heap of system information.

NTFS Undelete (http://ntfsundelete.com/), for file recovery.

Page Defrag (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/PageDefrag.mspx) for defragging.

Dead Pixel Buddy (http://www.laptopshowcase.co.uk/downloads.php?id=1)

ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/). It's amazing how many people don't have burning tools.

A basic free registry editor, to use in case malware is killing off regedit. Such as this one (http://www.aezay.dk/aezay/regcmd/index.html).

HijackThis (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php), and/or any of Merjin.org's scanning/cleaning tools. Of course.

CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/), because it's not always a good idea to let users do this.

PSPad (http://www.pspad.com/). You never know when a good text editor will come in handy. Also includes hex editor, character table, and more.

VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) and/or K-Lite Codec Pack (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm), for solving audio/video file problems.

Any or all of the Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/) collection. Bring a Knoppix CD as backup and you can run the PC without relying on any of the user's installed apps.

Having the latest Forceware (http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) and Catalyst (http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html) drivers can also be handy.

[Met44]

Those are all good ones oracle. I haven't seen SIW. What are some utilities others of you use?