Subscribe via e-mail: If not, you really should check them out. WindowsSecurity.com just finished a series of articles that discusses them in detail. The PsTools consist of a couple of command line tools, allowing you to view and manage many important Windows functions.
Here is a list with short description of each command:
- PsExec – execute processes remotely
- PsFile – shows files opened remotely
- PsGetSid – display the SID of a computer or a user
- PsInfo – list information about a system
- PsKill – kill processes by name or process ID
- PsList – list detailed information about processes
- PsLoggedOn – see who’s logged on locally and via resource sharing (full source is included)
- PsLogList – dump event log records
- PsPasswd – changes account passwords
- PsService – view and control services
- PsShutdown – shuts down and optionally reboots a computer
- PsSuspend – suspends processes
Sysinternals tools are great.
My only complaint is that in the GUI based tools like Autoruns or the excellent Process Explorer they replaced the context menu Google search with MS Live search.
I totally get why they did that, but it’s a shame cause I prefer using Google.
I somehow doubt that Microsoft will be successful with this strategy in the long run. You can make an online service known by integrating it in desktop software, but you can’t convince people this way to actually use it. People prefer Goolge because it is simply better than MSN Search. So all Microsoft gets is to annoy people like you if they mingle their software with their online services too much.