Sysinternals is still has some of the best administrations tools out there.  They continue to updated on a continued basis thanks to Mark Russinovich.  The latest update included updates to CoreInfo and Process Explorer.  Check out the links below for more information on Sysinternals.

Process Explorer

Sysinternals Main Site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

Sysinternals Download Site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062

 Mark Russinovich Blog
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/01/05/3473797.aspx

Mark Russinovich’s Upcoming Events
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963883

7zip is one of the best free file compression utilities currently available for download.  Just like its competitors 7zip can handle several different formats for zipping and unzipping of files.  The big thing that makes 7zip stand apart is its own compression standard.  You will usually see about 20-30 percent better compression when using the 7zip standard compared to the other industry standards.  Some of the advanced options include creating self extracting archives and the ability to adjust compression levels.  So if you are looking for a new file compression utility I highly recommend trying it out.  Please let us know what you think.

Main Features From 7zip Site (www.7-zip.org)

• High compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression
• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 79 languages

7zip Console

7-ZIP Download
http://www.7-zip.org/

System administrators sometimes need to be able to produce a list of drivers that are installed on their system.  Driveryquery.exe is an excellent command line tool from Microsoft to accomplish this.  This tool will give you a report on all of the current device drivers that are loaded on your system.  The command line tool also gives you several options on the information that it will display.  Below is a screenshot that shows all of the options available for running Driverquery.exe.

Driverquery.exe From Microsoft

Examples Of Driverquery.exe

This example will pipe the information from driverquery.exe to a txt file on the drive.
C:\driverquery.exe > C:\driverqueyr.txt

This example will format the output into a list view.
C:\driverquery.exe /fo list

This example will turn on verbose output for more information.
C:\driverquery.exe /V

This example will show drivers that are currently running.
C:\driverquery.exe /v | findstr Running

Filezilla is another one of those must have tools for both your work and home PC.  Even though with everything moving to the cloud I still run into a frequent need to FTP files to different companies and friends.

FileZilla is a free open source FTP application.  So one of the best features is that is is free to use. The interface is also another great feature as it is strait forward and easy to use.  Some of the highlights of the program is that is allows you to download and upload multiple files from several different servers at the same time.  You are also  able to customize the interface to set it up the way you like.   I have added a screenshot below of the user interface along with a link to their site.  Please leave us a comment if you have used FileZilla and like it.

FileZilla Interface

Features From the FileZilla Site:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
• IPv6 support
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Tabbed user interface
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Bookmarks
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable transfer speed limits
• Filename filters
• Directory comparison
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support
• Logging to file
• Synchronized directory browsing
• Remote file search

FileZilla Site
http://filezilla-project.org/

Additional FileZilla Screenshots
http://filezilla-project.org/client_screenshots.php

FileZilla Download Link
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

Image resizer is just one of those must have tools to have on your home PC.  The project is a clone of the old power toy image resizer.   One of the reasons it is a must have is I made the change this past year to a Cannon T2i DSLR camera.  Sending a 8-12 megabyte picture to family and friends is nearly impossible.  This tool makes it quick and painless to resize pictures down to an acceptable size limit.  It also comes in very handy when you are trying to upload profile pictures or send pictures to mobile devices.  Below you can see a screenshot of the option you have to choose from.  You can basically choose from small, medium, large, mobile, or a custom size.  The nice part about the tool is that it will automatically save a new picture and and onto the file name the size you chose.  I have also included the link for the project homepage where you can download it from.  If you use it let me know what you think by leaving a comment in the post.

Image Resizer Source Forge

Description From the SourceForge Project Site
This is a clone of Image Resizer which is one of the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP. It enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. This version will work also on non-XP versions of Windows including Windows Vista.

Image Resizer – SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phototoysclone/

I recently took on the task of upgrading a friends computer from XP to Windows 7.  I always forget that doing this also means you have to deal with all of the applications that they have installed.  The one app that I have learned to love and hate is iTunes.  It actually turns out the transferring the iTunes library was fairly easy except for one tricky part.  Here are the steps I completed to transfer their library.  Hopefully it helps somebody out.  The tricky part was step number seven.

1.  Backed up the user profile from the XP machine to the external hard drive.
2.  Connected the external hard drive to the new Windows 7 machine.
3.  Installed iTunes on the Windows 7 machine.  Should be the same version as the old machine.
4.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to             c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\apple computer\iTunes
5.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to
C:\users\username\appdata\local\apple computer\itunes
6.  From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\my documents\music\itunes to
C:\users\username\music\iTunes
7.  The final step I completed was to launch iTunes and open up preferences.  On the advanced tab changed the
iTunes media folder location from c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Media to
c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Music.

I ran across an error when launching task manager in Windows 7 which was “c:\windows\system32\taskmgr.exe  The parameter is incorrect”.  You can see a screen shot of the error below .  When I first received this error I was stumped as I had never had an issue with task manager in my life.  I then started thinking back to what I had done in the past few days and remembered what I had done.  I had enabled process explorer from sysinternals to replace task manager.  This is no big deal, but if you move the process explorer executable to a different location it is a problem.  I had been doing some house cleaning and moved the exe to another location.  To fix the problem all I had to do is launch process explorer again and under options select restore task manager.  When I had completed this process task manager started up without a problem.  Hopefully this post comes in handy to somebody else running into the same problem.

Error Displayed When Launching Task Manager

Windows 7 adds a great new security feature called UAC.  There are certain situations where you have to disable UAC which you can do by following the below steps.

1. Open control panel by going to the start menu -> Control Panel

2. From the control panel select User Accounts And Family Safety

3. Select User Accounts

4.  Select Change User Account Control Settings

5. Move slider bar to the bottom so it is at never notify.  Then click OK.

There are allot of great things about Windows 7 and one of them is that it has a built in disk defragger that runs in the background and just gets the job done.  The only problem with this is that some people prefer to use their own tool of choice.  If you want to do this you must turn off the built in defragger.  Use the following steps below to turn of Windows 7 defragmenter

1.  Go To Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

2.  Select Configuration Schedule

3.  Deselect Run On A Schedule And Click OK

If you are a fan of the new movie Avatar you can now bring it to your Windows 7 desktop.  Microsoft recently added the theme pack to its growing collection.  You can follow the direct link below to download the Avatar theme pack.  I would also recommend going to the personalization gallery as there are allot of other outstanding theme packs out there.

Avatar Theme Download Direct Link
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/B/41b95bca-cb54-4a6c-83ea-7a9e6e2fadef/Avatar_Windows7.themepack

Additional Microsoft Theme Packs
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize