Thank you for your submission of free Windows administration tools

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Michael Pietroforte

Michael Pietroforte is the founder and editor in chief of 4sysops. He has more than 35 years of experience in IT management and system administration.

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I will add my own favorite tools soon. Some of them are already in the list, so I will only be adding the new ones. Because of the positive feedback, I will continuously update this list. So if you run across a new free tool which you would like to share with other Windows admins, you know where to go.

Submitted Tools

Process Monitor and Process Explorer

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.

Robocopy

Submitted by Joe Topjian - Blog: Adminspotting
Robocopy is like rsync for Windows. It's abilities include moving mass amounts of data from disks and shares, keeping two directories mirrored, and maintaining ACLs through the whole process.

ShareWatch

Submitted by ochiru
This is a neat little tool that shows active users, their IP address and computer name sorted by the share they're using. All this in simple tree-like structure in which you can instantly find what you were looking for. You can connect to multiple servers and control how often the list will update (or choose to manually update).

Logparser

Submitted by morphly
Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory...just to name a few.

It uses a SQL-like syntax and features many functions for data conversion, time/date conversion, string manipulations, hashing, etc.

Check out the help file. There are lots of good and practical examples in it.

ManagePC

Submitted by Miha Pecnik
ManagePC is an application for PC management in Windows environments.
It lets you inventory all aspects of PCs on your domain including: Hardware, Services, Software, Hot-Fixes, Processes, Local Users and Groups.

It also lets you take control of PCs through RDP, VNC, you can reboot, start/stop services, uninstall software,...

I use it quite frequently and while it is a bit unstable it gets the job done.

------
End of description comment. Great idea for this list, I have a list of my own with tons of utils that I use on a regular basis. I'd love to see what others are using as well.

Best regards, Miha.

Treesize Free

Submitted by Lindsey
Lets you know where all your free space is going. No need to install; runs from a .exe.

WinDirStat

Submitted by Matt Everson
A great tool to see disk usage and look for large files or duplicate folders quickly and easily. It couples a standard directory list with a treemap, and works on drives, folders, or UNC paths.

Remotely Enable Remote Desktop

Submitted by Soeren P
Enables/disables remote desktop on remote computers. Works like a charm.

I think I read about it here some time ago.

Sysinternals Suite

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

WMI Asset Logger

Submitted by Bogdan Soima
WMI Asset Logger is a multifaceted utility that has the ability to return a great deal of information about windows based computer systems on your network, all from the convenience of your Windows XP workstation. WMI Asset Logger is also much more than that too, it is an administrator’s friend. Once you have scanned your network the true power of WMI Asset Logger comes out. Using the right-click speed menu enables you to quickly perform many tasks. Simply right-click on the desired host and choose Remote Control (initiate RDP Session), Remote Management Console, Install Software, View/Browse/Delete Shares, View/Start/Stop Processes on remote systems, and more.

DELTACOPY

Submitted by rork
DeltaCopy is an open source, fast incremental backup program. Let's say you have to backup one file that is 500 MB every night. A normal file copy would copy the entire file even if a few bytes have changed. DeltaCopy, on the other hand, would only copy the part of file that has actually been modified. This reduces the data transfer to just a small fraction of 500 MB saving time and network bandwidth.

Spiceworks

Submitted by Jeffrey Botts
You want network management software that works for you, not software that makes you work. You wish you could have it... without spending a fortune. Your wish is granted.

Introducing the free Spiceworks IT Desktop. Designed, tested and used by 160,000 IT pros in 185 countries. Spiceworks has the everyday IT features you need:

* Automatic PC and software inventory and IT asset reporting to simplify your job.
* Network monitoring and troubleshooting to keep things running smoothly.
* Run an IT help desk for your company that's easy to use and join the fastest-growing IT community.

It takes less than 5 minutes to get up and running. No agents. No scripts. No manual. No hassles. Just download Spiceworks and go.

Netsetman

Submitted by Christoph Kral
Another tool I am using on a daily basis: netsetman let you switch network settings with a single click.

The website says:

NetSetMan is a network settings manager which can easily switch between 6 different, visually structured profiles including:

* IP Address
* Subnet Mask
* Default Gateway
* DNS Server
* Computer Name
* Workgroup
* DNS Domain
* WINS Server
* Default Printer
* Network Drives
* Scripts (BAT, VS, JS, ...)

Necromancers Dos Navigator (NDN)

Submitted by Christoph Kral
Another Tool I like to share: "Necromancers Dos Navigator". Despite the bold name, it's one of the better if not the best free "file commander" out there. This tool is available for linux and w32 plattform and beats mc and other free commander tools with a lot of nice features like an inbuild hex editor, support for a lot of different archives types, a nice editor and a really versatile file viewer.

The Dude

Submitted by Tom - Blog: Kerpau!
It will automatically scan all devices within specified subnets, draw and layout a map of your networks, monitor services of your devices and alert you in case some service has problems.

spacemonger v1.4

Submitted by costinel
the best disk space viewer

locate32

Submitted by costinel
the best file name indexing utility

smartmontools for win32

Submitted by costinel
the best S.M.A.R.T. software; add blat.exe and you'll get automated email reports for failing disks.

console

Submitted by costinel
nice eye-candy replacement for cmd.exe (launches cmd but adds transparency, tabs, cursors, etc)

RunAsAdmin

Submitted by costinel
a nice approach to running with/without elevated rights.

SpecOps Gpupdate

Submitted by Dan Wilson
Handy tool that allows you to initiate remote WOL, gpupdate, shutdown/restart right from Active Users and Computers.

Servers Alive

Submitted by Martin Cadek
excellent monitoring application, free for monitoring up to 10 devices or services or any other type.

well worth the money too as it's one of the cheapest and most flexible monitoring applications I have ever used, but since this is a free list I think its 10 item limit still should qualify it 🙂

it's not as nice looking as other apps, but extremely flexible, very reliable and unlike most monitoring applications actually a joy to use.

From disk usage to network timing and Windows service checking to some dial up testing of your remote PBX or whatever crazy thing you can think of... this can do it all.

Sequoia View

Submitted by hdstn
A handy little tool that allows you to see graphically what is taking up your HDD space.