Process Explorer

Process Explorer is one of my favorite utilities.  Originally from the collection of software by Systernals, which is now owned by Microsoft.  PE is essentially Windows Task Manager on steroids.  My favorite use of this utility is for tracking down processes and services that are hiding in or behind some generic Windows process.  Process Explorer allows you to break down generic processes like svchost.exe into its individual child-processes.  You can also search for a file name you have found suspect to see which process is running it, and selectively kill that portion of the process.  This is how I have found root-kit viruses hiding in the recycle bin or restore folders.  While you're at the Systernals page, check out the other utilities in the Systernals collection.

Hiren's Boot CD

I know what some of you who may know about Hiren's already are thinking. Hiren's is free but contains software of questionable origin. This is no longer the case folks! For those of you that do not know about Hiren's Boot Cd already, Hiren's is a collection of over 300 programs and utilities bundled into a bootable CD image. You can boot into a DOS environment for low-level utilities like HDAT2 (a great hard drive recovery utility like SpinRite, or HDDRegenerator), or boot into a Windows environment with a large collection of tools and utilities. Hiren's used to come with pirated versions of Ghost, HDDRegenerator, Acronis, and others. The newer versions contain all free software. I would guess the Windows section is in a gray-license area, but I'll leave that moral dilemma up to you. The .iso file is available from several sources. Just search for "Hirens Boot CD .iso" in your favorite search engine. There are also directions on the Hiren's web site for making a bootable USB stick out of the .iso file. Hiren's CD Homepage