Sysinternals Suite

Windows comes with its own administration and management tools and the palette of options in the online world is quite variate, but no package is quite as indispensable to a system administrator as the Sysinternals Suite.

Originally co-developed and now maintained by Mark Russinovich from Microsoft, the software utilities inside the Sysinternals Suite are delivered to the wide public at no cost, providing some of the top useful tools to have around for diagnostics and troubleshooting.

There are over 70 applications in the suite, which are also available separately, but having them downloaded all in an all-in-one package is much more convenient. They are all portable, meaning that no installation is required, and you can carry them around with you on a removable USB stick, for instance, to use them on the go, whenever needed.

Almost any administrative task in Windows can be carried out using one of the applications inside the Sysinternals Suite. Probably the most popular is the Process Explorer, which resembles the Task Manager in terms of functionality, while bringing to the table additional advanced features that might just get you to make the switch immediately.

The Process Monitor provides a more comprehensive overview of all the running processes, granting you more control over managing them, while Autoruns helps you keep an eye on all the startup processes.

The Sysinternals Suite also comprises a series of file and disk utilities, such as AccessChk, Contig, DiskMon, Disk Usage and so on. You can tell what many of them do just by reading their name. Moreover, there is an entire collection of console-based applications that allow you to deal with running services, processes and so on. PsTools is the first example that comes to mind, providing a tool that retrieves detailed information about processes.

There are also networking tools, such as TCPView, which allows you to get a glimpse at the TCP and UDP connections initiated by running applications. A Whois tool is also in the package, and so are the Active Directory Explorer, PsFile, PsPing, and the list does not end here.

Whether you are a software developer or an IT professional, the utilities inside the Sysinternals Suite must definitely make way to your toolbox. The suite delivers advanced system applications that can be used for anything from monitoring and managing processes to having a look under the hood to see registry keys and components.