Some Notes on the Machines

A good way to defrag the registry.

http://www.registry-clean.net/free-registry-defrag.htm

Here is a site with quite a large number of unusual and helpful tools:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

This free-of-charge product, ‘Freeraser’:

http://codyssey.com/products/freeraser.html

appears to be quite good for files.  It’s GUI, and offers three levels of security.  This one:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx

is from Microsoft, it’s command-line, and will do files, folders, and whole drives by letter.

Robocopy has been the command-line best for a while; it’s built-in to Server 2008, and it’s in the 2003 Resource Kit. But there’s a better one in GUI, a Microsoft-made but unsupported tool, called RichCopy. Highly recommended.

Hint for RichCopy:  Put it in Advanced mode, using the View menu, for lots more options.

Comodo is making a good tool for registry cleanup:

http://system-cleaner.comodo.com/

If the fonts folder in Windows Server 2003 or before is broken, try this:

http://fix-fonts-folder.en.softonic.com/

To determine how long a Windows system has been up, enter the following into a Windows command shell:

systeminfo | more

There’s a whole lot more info there too, including at least sometimes, motherboard model number.

The Microsoft Process Explorer is an excellent tool to tell us which files and/or folders on a system are being used by each individual active process.  If you need to delete or rename a locked file or folder, use the Find menu and put the file/folder name into its single item, and you’ll have what you need.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

pstools is a very powerful command-line toolset for Windows:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

Its only problem is GUI EULAs.  To get around these, create a CMD file containing the single line below:

regedit /s pstools-eula.reg

and a file name pstools-eula.reg containing the text below.  Then run the CMD file, and all of the pstools utilities will run silently.  Obviously, you can use the contents in both files in simpler manner in lots of different ways.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsExec]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsFile]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsGetSid]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsInfo]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsKill]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsList]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsLoggedOn]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsLoglist]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsPasswd]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsService]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\PsShutdown]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\LoggedOn]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\AccessChk]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\C]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\RootkitRevealer]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\NewSID]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

Here is a good random password generator:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/