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Utilities

Windows comes with plenty of handy utilities, but there are times when you need to use stronger tools than these. The PC industry has thousands of third-party utilities that techs might use to diagnose and repair PCs. Sadly, there is no single selection of tools I can tell you to get: the tools one experienced tech uses differ from the tools I use based on experience, skills, and job functions. That doesn’t mean you haven’t been hearing my opinions! Throughout this book you’ve seen quite a few third-party utilities, and many of them are on the CD that comes with your book for you to use right away. Given that you already have my opinion on so many tools, let’s instead talk about the types of third-party tools you’ll find in most tech toolkits.

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NOTE The Tech Forums on the Total Seminars Web site (www.totalsem.com/forums) has an entire section dedicated to nothing more than what we call “Cool Tools.” If you want an opinion on hundreds of tech utilities, come over to the Tech Forums and see what we like…and what we dislike.

Many techs like to challenge me on the idea of carrying around tools. They say, “I know what I like; I’ll just download them!” Well, sometimes you don’t have Internet access and sometimes you need tools ready to go (see malware cleaners). Granted, there are a number of tools that I would never carry on me. For example, device drivers change so often that keeping a copy on disk is a waste of time. The tools I’m listing here are the ones I promise you want on disk, ready to go when you run into trouble.

Malware Cleaners

Ask any tech who works for Best Buy’s Geek Squad, “What do you spend the most time doing on jobs?” and they will reply, “Cleaning malware.” The first tech utilities you want in your toolkit are malware cleaners. To truly do it right, put your malware cleaners on a bootable optical disc because malware can sometimes attack a malware cleanup tool as you install. If you’re not sure what to try first, grab a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and try some of their fine cleanup tools.

Anti-Malware

After you clean the machine, make sure you have a copy of an anti-malware program that you can install so the user’s machine doesn’t get corrupted again. We talked about some of the popular freeware versions, but plenty of techs strongly prefer the pay versions and keep copies to sell to their customers.

Boot Tools

You need a tool that’s better than the System Configuration utility at controlling what programs autostart on your Windows PC. OK, in this case, one tool stands out so strongly that you have to get it: Mark Russinovich’s superb AUTORUNS. It’s vastly superior to the built-in System Configuration utility and gives you incredible control of everything that’s autostarting. Sure there are others, but I love AUTORUNS. Get it at www.sysinternals.com.

Password Clearer

If you lose a Windows password, especially the Administrator password, and you can’t log on to a system, you’re in trouble. A number of tools let you reset any user’s passwords. These programs don’t let you see a password, only reset them, so if you have a user with encrypted folders, those won’t be recoverable. None of these programs are easy to use, but when the alternative is not logging in, they will save you. Pretty much all of these programs run from a boot CD.

ZIP File Tool

Windows can read many compressed file formats (such as ZIP), but so many others are in use that it’s often a good idea to have your own copy handy. I like 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org/), but there are plenty of equally popular alternatives.

Backup

Odds are good that from time to time you’ll need to do a backup for a system. I keep an external hard drive with a backup tool so I can go in fast and make backups of the most critical files.

Don’t Forget Your Thumb Drives!

I guess I’m showing my age when I talk about putting all these tools on CD media. Sorry, I’m old. Almost all of these tools work equally well on USB thumb drives. I keep my tools on CD media because I still run into the occasional system that doesn’t