IT guy toolkit

WinDirStat - WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants).

PC World wrote:

157 software tools. No fees. No expiration dates. No problems. Sometimes even no downloads. No kidding.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704...

Not a huge tip, but never use RealVNC on a machineoutside of of a firewall, without making sure that it's password protected, or that you turn off VNC server and not allow it to run on startup. There are some port scanners that'll find copies of VNC server running on a machine and then immediately log in and try to ftp some infected files onto your machine and run them.

I found this out one afternoon at home, I'd just installed VNC back onto my home computer to do some stuff at work, but it was a lazy sunday and I took a siesta.. When i woke up, a command prompt had opened up and someone'd tried to FTP and execute some filez onto my machine, but I had the FTP service turned off so they failed, and just left it open. About a month ago, i installed VNC onto my home computer again, and forgetting about this previous incident, I was reading something in a reference book, look up, to see the exact same thing happening to my machine, and I wrestled my mouse away and closed out the command prompt and killed VNC.. Must have been bad timing, but it was surprising. Damned script kiddies..

You should never trust a firewall for security; it's a safety net, not something to rely on. Rather than saying "don't run VNC outside a firewall", you should say, "don't run VNC without a strong password, whether inside or outside a firewall."

Also a firewall is kind of redundant when you've got your computers sitting behind a router of some kind. It's by far the best piece of network gear anyone could buy. Having your computer connected directly to the internet without a router even with a firewall is just a bad idea.

Foxit PDF Reader is a great lightweight replacement for bloated Adobe Reader.

Okay, what the hell does it mean when a thread is a "stickie"?

It means it's permanently "stuck" at the top of the thread list.

Anodyne wrote:

It means it's permanently "stuck" at the top of the thread list.

Ah, that's what I thought. Thankee

Just saw this over at Extreme Tech:

Extreme Tech wrote:

With Process Explorer you can tear into any open process, whether it's visible anywhere else (the tray, the Task Manager, and so on) and see what it's up to, its CPU and memory usage, which DLLs it's using, and much more...

Process Explorer can blow away any process you don't think should be running, and everything underneath it (subfolders, DLLs, resources, etc.) that becomes orphaned (i.e. that's not in use by a different process).

Yeah, the whole (now bundled!) Sysinternals Suite are must have utilities.

Oh wow, I've been using ProcExp for a few years now - it's a godsend - but I didn't know about the other Sysinternals utilities. Thanks much!

This came up in another thread so I thought I'd put it in here:

Windows Vista (and newer) Business, Enterprise and Ultimate has a Complete PC Backup option. So after you build your system and getting it running squeeky clean do this:

Go to All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Backup Status and Configuration

You can back up various directories or files. But on the toolbar on the left at the bottom is Complete PC Backup.

From the utility:

Windows Complete PC Backup creates a backup copy of your entire computer, including programs, system settings and files.
To restore your computer using Complete PC Backup, you need to use the Windows Recovery Environment.

It can burn to a file or DVD(s), more info can be seen here.

well to add here is my current USB key (in terrible order of course)

AVG Free 8
Ccleaner
Hijackthis
Spybot S&D

Adapter Watch - description from readme -

AdapterWatch displays useful information about your network adapters: IP
addresses, Hardware address, WINS servers, DNS servers, MTU value, Number
of bytes received or sent, The current transfer speed, and more. In
addition, it displays general TCP/IP/UDP/ICMP statistics for your local
computer.

CurrPorts - description from readme -

CurrPorts displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports
on your local computer. For each port in the list, information about the
process that opened the port is also displayed, including the process
name, full path of the process, version information of the process
(product name, file description, and so on), the time that the process
was created, and the user that created it.
In addition, CurrPorts allows you to close unwanted TCP connections, kill
the process that opened the ports, and save the TCP/UDP ports information
to HTML file , XML file, or to tab-delimited text file.
CurrPorts also automatically mark with pink color suspicious TCP/UDP
ports owned by unidentified applications (Applications without version
information and icons)

IP Netinfo - description from readme -

IPNetInfo is a small utility that allows you to easily find all available
information about an IP address: The owner of the IP address, the
country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address,
phone, fax, and email), and more.

SmartSniff - description from readme -

SmartSniff allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your
network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations
between clients and servers. You can view the TCP/IP conversations in
Ascii mode (for text-based protocols, like HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and FTP.) or
as hex dump. (for non-text base protocols, like DNS)

FileZilla
Winsockfix
firefox

Mail PassView - Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the
passwords and other account details for various e-mail programs, outlook, windows mail, eudora, netscape, thunderbird, yahoo mail, google mail, hotmail, etc

PstPassword - recover lost passwords for .pst files

7Zip
Daemon tools
DOSBOX
WinRAR

VLC media player
XviD codecs
WebVideoCap - captures flash video in websites like youtube, google video, etc
PowerDVD SE

MSautoplayfix.exe
Revouninstaller.exe

SVChost viewer - displays whats going on in those SVCHOST processes, very handy!
unknown device identifier.exe - i think this is a bit dated, havent used it in a while

I work in an office surrounded by ISO's and various types of recovery disks so I dont keep a lot of that stuff on my USB key.

Found this site; evernote.com

Installs an advanced clipboard with online sync. Copies all types of media. Has a really good interface for clipping things quickly.

I just found something cool in Windows 7. Let's face it, most users are useless when it comes to describing a problem (even some IT pros aren't great at describing one) well what if you could send them a webpage describing how to record their error and the tool is built in to Windows (7)?

First up, the output of the recorder, note I am running the recorder when trying to run it again which causes the error at the end.

The report as you can see, takes screenshots each time you interact with the desktop as well as putting what happens at each step programically at the bottom of the report.
Because you don't see this section, when you click on Stop Recording it prompts you for a save location (desktop seems to be the default in my tests) and saves an .mht file in a .zip file which you can then send to whoever is helping you troubleshoot the issue.

To also run the tool you can type psr in the run window.

Pretty neat!

Process Explorer is great. I use it all the time especially on resource related issues.

For a malware scanner I prefer malware bytes over spybot.
Free antivirus (for non business) I use Avast.

I like Avasts business stance on antivirus, it doesn't bother you as much on upgrading, and I prefer the GUI.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

I just found something cool in Windows 7. Let's face it, most users are useless when it comes to describing a problem (even some IT pros aren't great at describing one) well what if you could send them a webpage describing how to record their error and the tool is built in to Windows (7)?

First up, the output of the recorder, note I am running the recorder when trying to run it again which causes the error at the end.

The report as you can see, takes screenshots each time you interact with the desktop as well as putting what happens at each step programically at the bottom of the report.
Because you don't see this section, when you click on Stop Recording it prompts you for a save location (desktop seems to be the default in my tests) and saves an .mht file in a .zip file which you can then send to whoever is helping you troubleshoot the issue.

To also run the tool you can type psr in the run window.

Pretty neat!

That is awesome, I will have to take a look at that.

Couple of handy apps to help you automate a few tasks. First the PC Decrapifier which removes unwanted apps from your PC, typically the pre-installed stuff by OEMs and other bundled software installers off the web usually have. The other is Ninite. Go to the site, select the apps you want and download the exe. Its installs the apps without asking you for input and removes various toolbars and other curmudgeon.

I rip my movies using DVD Shrink. There's no way to add DVD Shrink to the AutoPlay menu in Windows Vista/Windows 7 from within Windows... and that's where Default Programs Editor comes in. Among other things, it lets you add programs to the AutoPlay menu. It also lets you edit default file type icons, edit right-click context menus, file type descriptions, and, of course, edit the default programs. Very useful little tool!

Edwin wrote:
PC World wrote:

157 software tools. No fees. No expiration dates. No problems. Sometimes even no downloads. No kidding.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704...

Here's the 2009 edition.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack (FileFormatConverters.exe) is useful to have for those who don't/won't use the latest version of Office.

I've seen this mentioned somewhere in this forum, but it's buried in some thread. I'm sure someone mentioned a tool for remote VNC-like access. You send a .exe to the person you want to support and it sets up a secure link to let you control their PC, without any messy setup on their end. Any ideas?

Second that.

Here's what I got on my work thumbdrive, this has been my essential list for quite some time:
Ccleaner
Windirstat
7zip
Sysinternals Suite!!!!!!!!!!
S&M stress test
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder
CPU-Z
GPU-Z
UltraVNC
Easy Duplicate Finder
HD Tune
KeePass
irfanview
VLC
ImgBurn

I was gonna try out the PortableApps version of Teamviewer. I'm trying to find a better solution for screen sharing, because UltraVNC isn't quite as good as I'd like.

I just switched from canned air to a plug-in blower from Datavac. It's called the Electric Duster.

It's easily more than ten times as powerful as a can duster, with a much larger air stream. The first time I used it, I made the mistake of dusting a system inside the house. Never again. The thing is so powerful that it'll just fill the room with dust from the computer in seconds. Now I do it on the porch.

I can completely clean a system in under 3 minutes with this thing. Amazing.

Anyway, if you're looking to save money on canned air over about a year - it's around $50 or so on Amazon, iirc - this little beast is a godsend. (I posted this because so many gadgets look good in the catalog but kind of suck when you get them. This is definitely a winner.)

Hey guys - it's been a while since the OP and I don't know when it was last edited.

A friend at work comes to me sometimes with laptop problems. It sounds like his girlfriend's laptop has some type of malware that pretends to be anti-virus. It's showing pop-ups for Symantec 2012, but no Symantec products have been installed on this (several year old) laptop. You know what I'm talking about, probably - those popups that suddenly say crap like, "Symantec 2012 is detecting a threat! Click here to blah blah blah"

Would simply downloading and installing AVG/Avast work, or would you guys recommend using a tool that can be run from a thumb drive? If the latter, what's a good tool to use for this purpose? I'll be frank - in my 34 years I've never had a virus that I can recall. I run stuff to protect me, but I'm very careful about what I surf/click/download, so actually cleaning a computer of terrible little programs is foreign to me.