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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There is silence about Green IT lately. I suppose that the economic crisis hysteria is keeping CIOs busy on stuff like what project could be cut next. However, reducing power costs is probably the only way that really makes sense when it comes to cutting costs in IT. Considering that the majority of organizations spend most of their power costs for desktop computers, it is the first place they should be looking, in order to reduce power consumption.

The main reason for the higher power consumption on desktops is that users tend to let their computers run 24 hours a day. I only became aware of this fact when someone at Microsoft had the brilliant idea of enforcing reboots after system updates. I think that many don’t feel bad about letting their computer run all the time because they rely on Windows’ power management features. However, there are also many users who disable power management (if you allow it) because some of its features can make a computer unstable and because it usually becomes active at the very moment that you want to continue working.

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Windows Vista has lots of bells and whistles. With these come even more switches and handles. The good thing about it is that everyone can tweak the desktop to her or his liking. The downside for administrators is that the number of service desk calls by users who have configured their desktops so well that they are hardly usable anymore, is increasing with every newly deployed Vista machine. One way to solve this problem is disallow end-users to change their configuration. The other, friendlier, option is to be prepared when a desperate user who has messed up his desktop calls you.

The Ultimate Windows Tweaker can be helpful here because it unites the most common switches and handles into one tiny tool. Many of Vista’s important configuration options are hidden deep in the system. It usually costs you quite a few mouse clicks to reach them. You also need a good memory, because it is often not obvious where to find the right switch. Are the UAC settings in the User Account applet? Do they belong to the Security Center? – Or do you need the Local Security Policy snap-in?

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There are quite a few defragmentation tools out there, mostly because the Windows Disk Defragmenter has only limited capabilities. One missing feature is the ability to defrag individual files and folders. Disk Defragmenter only allows you to defrag individual volumes – but why would you want to defrag only individual files? The main reason is that defragmenting a whole drive or volume can be a time-consuming process. Sometimes you don’t have time for this.

You probably know that defragmenting a virtual disk within the virtual machine is not enough, because this won’t defrag the corresponding files on the host’s hard drive. In particular, dynamically growing virtual disks tend to fragment, which can significantly decrease the performance of the virtual machine. Under some circumstances, it might make sense to only defrag a certain virtual disk file. For example, if the physical disk is large, you can significantly reduce the defragmentation time if you defrag only the problematic virtual disk file.

Defraggler is a free portable defragmentation tool that enables you to analyze hard drives to find defragmented files. You just select the files you want to defrag. It is also possible to defrag certain folders. This can be useful if you have to defrag all virtual disks on a certain host.

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Do you know of the Change Analysis Diagnostic Tool for Windows XP? I find this two-year-old Microsoft utility quite useful in situations where you have to repair Windows machines on which end users have admin rights. The tool can display changes made to the computer within a configurable time period.

According to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article, the Change Analysis Diagnostic Tool is able to analyze modifications in the following areas: Installed and removed programs, installed updates, COM components that Internet Explorer loads, driver modifications, downloaded Active-X controls and other Auto-Start Extensibility Points (ASEPs) .

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Several days ago, I blogged about the free tool Steel Run As. It allows standard users to run a program with administrator rights. Since then, I came across two other tools that serve the same purpose. One is the free command line tool CPAU, recommended by Andrew in my earlier post. The other is RUNASSPC (RUNAS + PASSWORD + ENCRYPTION) which is only free for personal use. Prices range between 20 and 200 Euros, depending on the number of computers you have in your network. While playing with RUNASSPC, I learned something new about Steel Run As, which simplifies its usage under Vista if UAC is enabled.

I assumed that it is necessary to avoid a UAC prompt if someone with standard user rights runs a program that requires admin rights. For this reason, I included the elevate command in the batch script, in my example that allows standard users to change the TCP/IP settings.

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In my last article I introduced Admin Arsenal, Brisworks’ system management tool for small and mid-sized businesses. Today I will describe its components, i.e., hardware and software inventory, software deployment, and monitoring, in detail.

Admin Arsenal organizes computer objects in collections. There are two types of collections, static and dynamic. A static collection is populated manually, i.e., you can just drag computer objects to the corresponding folder. A dynamic collection is based on criteria you configure and is populated automatically whenever you access its folder. Criteria can be combined and use almost any hardware or software property. For example, you can configure a collection that contains all Windows XP SP3 machines using a shared printer. Collections can be organized in folders and subfolders, allowing you to create a hierarchy of computer property-based containers.

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It is not easy to replace Vista, an operating system which we have learned to love, right? But Windows 7 is nice too, so we want both of them. I guess many of you are running Windows 7 now in a dual boot configuration. The problem with the Windows Boot Manager is that it lets you select only the operating system before the system boots up.

It is the perfect time to get a cup of coffee while you are rebooting your computer to switch to another OS. As usual, you underestimated Vista’s speed, so when you come back with your well deserved coffee, you already missed the boot menu. You wait until Vista finished booting up to restart your computer again. This gives you the chance to go and get the milk for your coffee. You now know how the story ends. You missed the boot menu again. You decide to wait for the boot menu this time even if you are really tempted to get some sugar for your coffee…

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