SysInternals

Thursday 22 May 2003 — This is over 21 years old. Be careful.

SysInternals offers a boatful of outstanding freeware for Windows. My favorites are great for reverse-engineering file and registry access:

  • Filemon traces all access to the file system, allowing you to see exactly how an application is using files. Yesterday, it proved invaluable in determining exactly how Lotus Notes finds its notes.ini file.
  • Regmon does the same for the Windows Registry, showing all accesses as they happen.

There are other awesome tools there, with source included!

Comments

[gravatar]
andrew 11:18 AM on 22 May 2003
Puh-leeze! The king is the awesome Process Explorer. I have used this gem to debug almost every problem that arose in the QA lab.
[gravatar]
Ned Batchelder 12:08 PM on 22 May 2003
I have to admit, Process Explorer is awesome. I had overlooked it, but it is like Task Manager on steroids. Just the fact that it will show me the description and image path for running processes is fabulous. I have no idea what half the junk running on my system is, and Process Explorer makes it easier to track down.

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