System Tools

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Process Explorer is another very useful free tool from SysInternals.

It’s pretty much Windows Task Manager on sterroids. It provides a vast amount of information, but in a very concise and readable form. By default, it will show you every running process, but this can usefully be restricted to, say, non-system processes, so you can limit it down to your user applications.

You can specify the individual columns to be displayed, even down to .Net Jitted Methods and other development related tasks. You can add a CPU usage graph for each process, a memory usage per process graph and many other useful items.

In the main total cpu usage graph at the top of the form, hovering the mouse-pointer over a peak will show which process was causing it, useful when you’re trying to ascertain over a period of time what may be slowing your machine down.

Double-clicking on a particular process provides you with a wealth of information (see screenshot below), down to the stack trace and thread start addresses.

I’d strongly recommend this application to anyone who may be having problems with their PC performance (i.e. for identifying potential viruses or spyware), or who wants to monitor their own applications for memory leaks and performance issues.

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I often find myself copying large chunks of text and/or images to the clipboard, then switching to another application to paste the data back in. This can be a real chore with the standard Windows clipboard, switching backwards and forwards between applications.

This is where ClipX comes in. ClipX is a free clipboard monitoring tool which allows you to copy a number of items into the clipboard at once. Once stored, with just a few key presses (by default Ctrl-Shift-Insert) you’ll see a list of all stored items (both text and graphics) on screen and can paste any one of them into the current document.

This is a terrific time saver for things such as web page development. I’m using it now to copy sections of text and graphics to include in this page.

There are numerous options available, such as the ability to save the clipboard history across sessions, saving the clipboard history, so you could load it back up at some later stage - handy for repetitive entries, history cleaning etc.

This is one of those great little applications that makes you wonder how you ever coped without it once you’ve used it for a while.

 
ClipX showing recent clips

 
One of the ClipX properties dialog boxes

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There are an incredible number of compression utilties available. 7Zip stands out amongst them for 2 main reasons - 1. It’s free and 2. It has an incredibly efficient compression algorithm - 7z. It can also compress to/from the ubiqutous Zip format, at varying compression levels, in addition to GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR. You can also create self-extracting archives using its 7z algorithm.

7Zip also meets a criteria I always look for in any software - ease of use. It is designed purely to handle compression/decompression and is not bloated with a ton of features you’ll never use.

Another terrific feature is the Command Line version, which allows you to build automated batch files to compress your files, perhaps prior to a backup. I use this feature a great deal.

7Zip comes as standard with support for multiple languages and is supplied with an extensive Help file covering both the standard and command line versions.

The software is completely free, but the author accepts paid-for registrations to help with development. The free version has no crippling whatsoever.

 
7Zip main interface

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Autoruns from SysInternals (who also produce the wonderful Process Explorer) allows you to see precisely what starts running when you boot your PC.

The most useful feature (to me) is that you can simply prohibit the running of a particular process by unchecking it in the processes list (see screenshot below). This way, if you see something suspicious in your list, simply uncheck it and re-boot. At some later stage, you can also opt to complete delete it from the startup list. You can double-click any item in the list and the program will launch the Windows Registry Editor, showing the relevant key.

The display is split into a number of tabs, defaulting to “Everything”, but you can limit this to “Services”, “Drivers” etc to just look in those areas.

I’ve found this in invaluable tool, especially when installing new software only to find it’s popped something in my startup without telling me. Often, it’ll be fine, but sometimes I’d like to be able to only start the installed application when I want to, not every time I start my machine.

 
Main Autoruns screen

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System cleansing is an absolute necessity. After a session at the computer, you’re left with countless temporary files, internet cookies etc that all take space up on your pc and, in some cases, leave a history of what you’ve been up to during that session.

CCleaner (or Crap Cleaner, to give it its full name!) is designed to erase all of that temporary data for you, in addition to a number of other functions, as follows:

 
The Cleaner

This is used to clear out your browser cache, temporary files (*.tmp etc), log files, clipboard etc. I use this every time I shut down my browser and after a days work to clear out all the temp stuff. You can select various levels of deletion, from a straight forward “normal” delete, to a 7-pass DOD strength delete.

 
The uninstaller

I prefer this over the default Windows one, primarily because it populates the application list in an instant. Other than that, it serves the same purpose as Windows own uninstaller.

 
Fix issues

This is the best bit This is what I consider to be the best regsitry cleaner I’ve ever used. There are many applications available that serve a similar purpose, both payware, shareware and commercial. I’ve tried a great many of them, but what I love about CCleaner (Crap Cleaner!) is that it’s the only one I’ve used that hasn’t damaged my system in any way. You can scan for items in specific sections (i.e. Applications, Fonts etc), or scan the entire registry. You’re provided with the data relating to the entry (normally the full path to it, so you can determine what it is) and the registry key. Once you’ve selected the items you want to remove, you have the option of backing up the changes first, so if things do ever go wrong, you can re-insert the keys if need be.

The application also checks for updates on start-up, so you can make sure you have the latest version. Updates are very regular and simply install over the top of the existing version.

Installation, by default, will also install the Yahoo toolbar, but you have the option of not installing it if you wish.

This application is Donationware, but still falls into my “free” criteria, as any donations are voluntary.

In summary, one of my must-have applications.