Windows only Windows includes several different command line tools that are useful for viewing network-related details on your computer such as ipconfig, route, and netstat. The ipconfig command provides TCP/IP configuration information, route lets you modify your system's IP routing table, and netstat displays active connections and ports.
Windows only There are some times where it would be nice to reset important registry values and services back to their default state. With RefreshPC you can do exactly that. They don't list out exactly what changes are made, but there are over 300 registry settings and services that will revert back to their original state.
Don't you hate when someone is trying to explain a computer problem they are having and you aren't able to see exactly what's on their screen? It's especially painful when the person you're trying to help doesn't know much about computers.
For many of us it is difficult to test a website from another country, but there are online tools that try to make this kind of thing more accessible to everyone. One service I tend to gravitate towards the most is the WebPageTest.org site we previously covered. If you are looking to troubleshoot network issues, however, that site may not provide the details you are looking for.
A few weeks ago someone came to me with their computer because it was in a virtually unusable state. They couldn't download and install any applications anymore because of multiple viruses they managed to get infected with, and their existing antivirus app had been expired for quite awhile ().
Often times people complain about the performance of a Microsoft Office application and often place the blame on an add-on or something else that may not have settled right with Office.
Mac only I think iPhoto is a pretty nice app for managing images on your Mac, but it's not without its faults. Apple has also realized this and that is why they offer a hidden set of recovery options to account for those problems.
Windows only There are an infinite number of reasons as to why someone's Internet connection could stop working, but even with that in mind there are still a number of things we techies are "trained" to check first before banging our heads against the wall. I'm talking about things like releasing/renewing the IP address, flushing the DNS, and checking the Windows Firewall settings.
Windows only If you've ever had to troubleshoot an issue on someone else's computer you know how frightening it can be to look at the list of programs that start with their machine.
I've been spending some time optimizing my Windows 7 Media Center installation, and in doing so I've found some good information that has helped me pinpoint why I don't always see perfectly smooth video when streaming to my Xbox 360.
Core Temp is an app that true geeks sill surely love. It really only does one thing, but does it very well: it reports on the temperature of your processor, and can even grab the temperature of each individual core. A list of the supported processors (current as of September 2010) can be found below, and if yours is on the list I'd say you're in for a real treat.
A lot of great utilities have come out of Sysinternals, such as Process Explorer, and Autoruns is definitely among the top of the list. It's extremely useful for anyone that deals with bogged down systems on a regular basis. It will essentially lay out all of the items that start up with Windows, and goes way beyond the things you'll find in the built-in msconfig tool.
I love coming across useful network-related tools, and SoftPerfect Network Scanner is pretty cool for both system administrators and geeky home users. With it you can scan an entire range of IP addresses and retrieve things like their host name, MAC address, response times, and much more.
