In my article about the analysis of Windows crashes, readers recommended the freeware tool BlueScreenView from Nirsoft. I had a look at it, and it is indeed quite useful. It helped me to get an idea about the cause of the crashes of my Windows 7 machine. The portable tool reads the data from the crash dump files in c:\Windows\Minidump.

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Did you ever wonder how you could restore the Recycle Bin to the Windows desktop or why you were unable to open help files? FixWin is a free portable tool that allows you to fix 50 such typical problems under Windows 7 and Vista.

One of the advantages of Windows from a user’s perspective is that it comes with countless configuration options that can be changed easily. Competing operating systems either support much fewer options (the marketing guys of this company call this ease of use) or offer a comparable number of choices but only for command line geeks (the supporters of this OS often claim that GUIs are only for lusers or lamers).

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Windows once had a very bad reputation regarding stability. Windows NT improved the overall stability significantly, but perhaps Windows XP was the first Windows version that could be called stable. Due to sloppy programming of third party devices drivers, Vista’s stability suffered considerably. Windows 7 was remarkably stable right from the beginning, thanks to Vista’s groundwork.

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)

It can be quite annoying if a system is continuously crashing with the famous blue screen of death (BSOD). There are several ways to find the culprit. The Windows Eventlog is always the first place you have to check, if problems occur. If Windows has already been already running smoothly for some time and only started bucking lately, then newly-added devices or updated drivers are most likely the culprit. As to my experience, applications rarely cause system crashes. But be aware that some applications install nonhardware drivers (anti-virus software, encryption tools etc.).

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HWiNFO32 is a freeware hardware information and diagnostic tool. The information it provides goes far beyond the built-in Windows tools. To get an idea of how detailed the information is, please have a look at the screenshot, which displays data about the CPU. The Windows Device Manager basically only tells you the brand name, whereas HWiNFO32 has information about more than 100 different CPU parameters. Such detailed information can be useful if you have to fight with device driver problems, because you can use it to search on the Internet. These details are also helpful if you are planning to buy new computers and have to compare different PC models.

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Submitted by Joe

I couldn’t live without this marvelous little tool. Take any machine in any AD domain and it will display a plethora of data about it as well as letting you control services, uninstall software, create scheduled tasks as well run standard stuff like MMC consoles, VNC etc. For such a small application it’s amazing how many features are packed into it.

From the publisher’s site:

ManagePC is an open source .NET application for PC management in Windows environments.

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Associating directories with drive letters is useful if you have to access a certain folder, frequently. Visual Subst is the free GUI version of the command line tool subst that allows you to map a folder to a drive letter. Although the new Favorites pane in Vista and Windows 7 serves more or less the same purpose in Windows Explorer, this pane is not useful for mapping drives if you are working with the command prompt. Visual Subst can also be helpful if you are still working with Windows XP or if you are using legacy applications that don’t use the default file dialog API. Since Visual Subst allows you to store its settings, your folder drive mappings will still be available after a restart.

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Many admins always bring their important standalone tools with them on a USB stick. The disadvantage of portable applications is that you always have to first open your flash drive in Windows Explorer and then search for the tool. With the freeware utility Pstart, you can launch your portable tools much quicker. The utility works like the Start Menu in Vista.

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Many believe that Windows is a bloated operating system. However, the truth is that the Windows ecosystem is bloated, bloated like the shopping malls in western countries, allowing you to buy everything your heart desires. Of course, you can always use another operating system if you prefer a “political system” that gives you fewer choices and less freedom. Yet another option is to cleanse your “garage” every now and then from all the junk that you no longer need. And this is where CCleaner comes in.

CCleaner is a famous free optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. I should have added it long time ago to the list of free administration tools, because it is a valuable tool for admins who have to clean a user’s PC that has been cluttered with junk. This usually improves the performance of a Windows PC that has become slow because too many applications have been installed over time, often leaving traces even after they have been uninstalled. CCleaner can also help to free disk space. If you are planning to upgrade your PC to Windows 7, then it might make sense to get rid of all of the deadwood first—although I would always recommend that you perform a fresh install of a new Windows version.

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Last week, I outlined why I am a bit disappointed about the Windows 7 taskbar. Alt-Tab and the 3D document flip are not good task switching solutions, either. Both options have the disadvantage of making it quite difficult to locate applications with multiple opened instances. A much better solution is the free tool VistaSwitcher of NTWind Software. It doesn’t look as cool as 3D document flip or Aero Peek, but its functionality is superior to all of Microsoft’s task switching solutions.

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As an admin, you probably have to make a screenshot every now and then, to demonstrate something to a user or colleague. Vista’s Snipping Tool will probably do in most cases, but PicPick Tools certainly has a few useful additional features.

As with the Snipping tool, you can capture the full screen, a region, and an active window. In addition, PicPick supports freehand capture, window control (automatically scroll a page that doesn’t fit on the screen), and fixed region (enter width and size). Moreover, you can repeat the last capture, which can be useful if you have to take a screenshot series of the same screen region. I also like that PicPick has a magnifier that allows you to precisely select a screen region. You can assign keyboard shortcuts for each of the capture methods.

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Product Key Finder is a very simple tool that allows you to retrieve product keys from a Windows computer. Its publisher claims that it supports more than 200 Windows applications. The tool displays the licenses keys it retrieves from the registry in a small window, but it can also be launched on the command line. Thus, you can use it in scripts. Furthermore, it is possible to remotely retrieve license keys with Product Key Finder.

The tool only supports two command switches: /CSV and /remote. “/CSV” will create a text file in the CSV format. The file name is just the computer name with the extension .txt. You can use multiple computer names with the /remote switch. Product Key Finder will then create multiple CSV files.

It appears that Product Key Finder has problems with Vista x64. It failed to retrieve the Microsoft Office 2007 product key on my test machine. In contrast, it had no problem exporting the Office license key on Vista x86. I tested Product Key Finder 2.0.9

Product Key Finder

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A few days ago, I blogged about BartPE, a well known tool for creating a Windows PE based rescue boot CD. Some readers recommended checking out UBCD4Win, which is an offspring of BartPE. The main difference between the two is that the UBCD4Win project is still alive while BartPE seems to have been discontinued. There is also no doubt that UBCD4Win is the far more advanced tool. The number of rescue utilities is impressive. And best of all – its Windows PE installation didn’t crash on my Dell Precision laptop, unlike BartPE.

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AutoHotkey is a famous, free Open Source mouse and keyboard macro utility. It allows you to automate all kinds of Windows tasks. As an IT administrator, you will probably have to perform quite a few tasks repeatedly. Using shortcuts for complex GUI-based operations can significantly improve your productivity.

When I first tried AutoHotkey, I uninstalled it after two minutes or so. Only when I saw, in my continuous search for a free keyboard macro creation tool, how popular it is, did I gave it a second chance. The reason I was turned off by the tool at first was that the first macro I created with its recorder, AutoScriptWriter II, produced an error message when I first launched it (Error: Requires at least one of its Windows parameters). I found this a bit odd considering that nothing had really changed on my desktop since I’d created the macro.

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Is your desktop always cluttered with tons of shortcuts, files, and folders? If so, the free tool Deskcretary might be helpful. Every time I clean my desktop, I resolve to not mess it up again with unimportant junk files, but, somehow, I am unable to keep the resolution. Once the first “temporary files” have started accumulating on my desktop, my resistance to littering my desktop starts to wear off, since I know I have to clean it again anyway. After that it is only a matter of days until my desktop is, once again, completely covered.

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Edison PC Power Management Software is a free tool from Verdiem that is endorsed by Microsoft. This simple but useful tool allows you to schedule power management settings and calculates the money, energy, and CO₂ saved.

Scheduling is fairly simple. Edison distinguishes between the times that you are working and the times that you are not working. For each day of the week you can configure at what times you are usually at work. You then simply tell the tool how strict you want to be with regard to power management at this times.

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