Tools a Windows administrator cannot live without

Question

As a Windows administrator, what tools do you feel you cannot live without?

Answer 1

3rd party tools are great, but before I start there, the basic ones you get with the system:

• Computer Management
• Event Viewer
• Services Console
• Perfmon
• Active Directory Users and Computers
• Active Directory Domains and Trusts
• Active Directory Sites and Services
• Group Policy Management Console (okay, so you download this one)
• The command line itself with
  • netstat
  • nbtstat
  • ipconfig
  • net
  • findstr
  • netsh
• Internet Explorer/Firefox
• Scripting tool like VBScript/PowerShell/Perl
• Notepad

Other Tools:

• Sysinternals PSTools Suite
• Sysinternals Process Explorer
• Sysinternals Process Monitor
• Joe Richards' free tools
• Microsoft Office OneNote

Answer 2

SysInternals Suite

Answer 3

I can't live without PowerShell.

Answer 4

WinDirStat is great for finding out how all your disk space it getting used.

Answer 5

I always post this one, but it remains true. Beyond Compare is the best folder & file diff program. It is so ridiculously useful for maintenance work and updating, plus it does built-in FTP

Answer 6

Robocopy.

Recursive copying with solid reporting and allows you to update changed only. Used to be part of the windows resource kit, but i think it's distributed with Vista now.

Answer 7

Never underestimate the power of a really good text editor. I've used UltraEdit for years and couldn't live without it. I've tried moving to Notepad++, Editplus, and a few other text editors and I always end up frustrated and back using UltraEdit. You can also get a U3 version that lives on a flash drive.

Answer 8

• ProcessExplorer
• PS Tools
• Perl
• Perfmon
• TextPad/Notepad++
• Terminal Services
• Cygwin

Answer 9

A Linux LiveCD (Knoppix preferably)

And processexplorer

Answer 10

The SysInternals suite, live edition:

http://live.sysinternals.com/

hexedit or another hex editor.

Answer 11

WMIC lets you do pretty much anything to any networked windows computer.

Some fun things to try:

wmic computersystem get name

What user is currently logged into the system:

wmic netlogin get name,lastlogon

Users who have logged into a system, and when they last logged in:

wmic os get lastbootuptime

When was the last time the machine booted; (do you have a machine not getting updates?)

wmic product get name,verion

Finds applications installed with a specific name:

wmic product where 'name = "%Product Name%"' get name

Also remember you can run these on networked systems:

wmic /node:"computername1" os list brief

Answer 12

I'd throw 7-zip into the pool. Free/Open source and opens most compression formats. I use it often for moving files from one server to another (updates and/or images).

Answer 13

These are more for the desktop/laptop power users:

• safarp: small and fast Add/Remove Programs
• launchy: keystroke launchyer
• console: multi-tabbed cmd.exe, (and then some)
• jkdefrag (portable):lite-weight defragger
• AnVir task manager: manager for running processes, services, and startup programs (commercial but has a lite free version).
• Notepad++: Probably best text-editor available for windows.
• WinMerge: visual diff/merge tool

Answer 14

Batch files :-)

Answer 15

shutdown - can shut down a non-responding host remotely

shutdown -r -t 0 -f -m <machine>

taskkill - kill processes from the commandline

taskkill /pid <pid>

psexec - the windows equivalent of ssh (from sysinternals, as previously noted)

Answer 16

Total Commander - Norton Commander look-a-like for Windows. I use this all the time, it's simply the best (!) file manager. Also it's shareware, so if you can live with a startup nag-screen it's free.

Ultraedit - Not free, but nothing beats this text editor. Once you go down the path of ultraedit, there's no turning back.

putty - It just works.

Answer 17

TreeSizeFree for figuring out what's using all your storage space.

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Answer 18

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility - saved my bacon multiple times.

Visual C# Express - really! The .NET framework has a LOT of useful classes for automating admin tasks, and I've rolled my own small army of useful utilities.

Answer 19

I find Agent Ransack or its non-free version, File Locator Pro, to be much much more effective than the basic "Search" function of Windows (which was/is broken on XP)

Answer 20

I have been testing Spiceworks. So far, made my life easier, so let's toss it on the pile.

Answer 21

If for some reason you don't want to get and install the whole Cygwin GNU utilities for Win32 are useful. It's nice to fire up cmd and use grep, wget, tail, etc.

sniffer to see what exactly is happening on the wire [ unless you can tap somewhere on the switch with port mirroring].

Far Manager for those like me who still prefer console rather over Windows Explorer. and yeah - it's open source now! Ready to use builds are here.

Notepad++ was already mentioned, but Notepad2 - not. It's very useful Notepad replacement. It has syntax hilight, block operations, different encoding.

Answer 22

I live by TaskInfo, an integrated utility that beats Task Manager and Systems Information hands down.

Answer 23

testdisk - saved my ass a when my raid screwed up, was able to copy the data off it to another drive even though it wasn't showing up in windows. now i can't live without it.

Answer 24

Logparser is a must.

Answer 25

Ultra Vnc SC a free remote desktop tool. Some features: You only need one exe to pass to client, no install, Can be customized and You also can translate this tool, got a file transfer and chat.

Answer 26

Remote Desktop / Terminal Services

Answer 27

• mRemote for remote connections
• EditPad Pro for text editing
• Wireshark for sniffing

Answer 28

• Active Directory - if you manage a domain this is your best friend. It centralizes all control over users/computers/printers/groups in your organizational unit into one program.

• gpedit - the group policy editor, allows you to easily manage registry entries for groups of users at a higher level.

• regedit - Great for making lower level tweaks to the system not available through the group policies.

Answer 29

I still find myself firing up Sequoia View to spot the massive temp files/caches that can otherwise lie unnoticed on a volume.

Answer 30

Apart from the regular Windows MMC tools and OS native support tools, these are a few I use regularly. Sysinternals, Resource Kit tools, WinDBG, WMI scripts, Performance & reliability monitor and PowerShell scripts