Microsoft’s Sysinternals tools are now ”live”. When I read this today, I wondered how this could possibly work. I mean, how can you integrate a bunch of sophisticated system tools in a Web site? I was quite disappointed, when I saw that Sysinternals Live is nothing other than a directory on a Web Server, which contains all of the Sysinternals tools.

The directory only lists the DOS-style name of the Sysinternals tools. If you are not a Sysinternals geek, you will hardly find your way around in there. So what is the purpose of this? Well, you can launch the Sysinternals tools from the command prompt with \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname>. This is could be useful, if you work on a desktop where you don’t have your toolbox at hand.

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TCPView is a free Sysinternals tool from Microsoft allowing you to monitor TCP and UDP endpoints. It has the same purpose as the command line tool netstat that comes with Windows. Contrary to netstat, TCPView is a GUI tool. Usually, it is the first tool I use if strange things are happening on a computer, i.e. if I think that it might have been infected by spyware or other malware.

TCPView lists the process, the local TCP port, the remote address and the state of the TCP connection. If you want to get more details about the program, for example where the exe file is located, you just have to right click and select “Process Properties”. You can also terminate a connection or end the process.
There is a command line version of TCPView (Tcpvcon) which is similar to netstat. TCPView runs Windows Server 2008/Vista/NT/2000/XP and Windows 98/Me.

TCPView

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ShellRunas v.1.0 is a new Sysinternals tools by Mark Russinowich. It enables you to run a program with different credentials from Windows Explorer. The tool works with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Tools such as RunAsAdmin or RunAsLimitedUser allow you to run commands only with a certain account. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 already have this run as option in the context menu of Windows Explorer. Microsoft removed it for some reason in Windows Vista and Server 2008. ShellRunas weeds out this mistake. You can use ShellRunas from Windows Explorer by right clicking on the application you want to start and then on “Run as different user”.

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Nick MacKechnie reports that some Sysinternals tools have been updated. PSExec v1.90 improves handling of arguments, BgInfo v4.12 offers improved reporting, Process Explorer v11.04 fixes a memory leak, ADExplorer v1.01, DebugView v4.72 and Process Monitor v1.26 fix some minor bugs.

Submitted by Christoph Kral

The Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities for the various aspets of Windows administration.
(Not only Procmon or Proc Explorer)

Sysinternals Suite

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Submitted by Colin Bowern - Blog: Colin Bowern

When it comes to figuring out why something isn’t operating the way it should having a view of the process, file, and registry activity gives you insight that is indispensible.

Process Monitor and Process Explorer

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Microsoft has released the free Sysinternals Process Explorer 11. Most of the new features are related to Vista. Not everything is improved, though.

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I just ran across the new McAfee Rootkit Detective 1.0. There are so many anti-rootkit tools available now, and it’s about time that McAfee comes out with its own free rootkit detection utility.

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Microsoft released Process Monitor v1.2 just two weeks ago. Now there is a newer version available again. It is only a minor update, just as the ones for TCPview and PSExec. Since all three utilities belong in every admin’s tool box, it is worth a blog post.

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Microsoft released Process Monitor v1.2, a free tool to monitor real-time file system, registry and process/thread activity. There is an “interesting” SearchWinIT article about its new features. I guess the author never saw Process Monitor in his life.

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