I’ve come across a few tools that I think every Network Analyst/Support Technician/Computer Wrangler should have in their gun belt whilst troubleshooting that I feel are worth sharing.
Process Explorer (Download for here!)
Process Explorer does what it says, it helps you “Explore” the “Processes” that are going on.
When you have something come up, like a pop-up window, error window, or just some crazy weird white box and you NEED to know what program is causing that to happen, you can use the FIND Windows Process Option to drag a set of crosshairs over it to reveal the program/application rendering the error. This can be useful to troubleshoot mysterious objects on any windows display.
Process Explorer also lets you search for program names and even device types. This can be useful when troubleshooting devices, such as USB adapters or serial devices, along with other process/services, like VPNs. I’ve used this to identify programs that were capturing a COM port for a serial to USB adapter that would attach to a scale.
WinDirStat (Download from here!)
When a hard disk is running out of space and you need a bird’s eye view of the bits and bytes, WinDirStat is a great resource to leverage. You can scan multiple drives, or a single drive, and WinDirStat will provide you with a summary of all of the files, how big they are, and how they are grouped. This can be great to identify large redundant files (like that ISO of the that old laptop that’s been saved 43 different times on the file and print server) or folders full of log files that are not being truncated (because your backup solution wasn’t Exchange aware.)
Advanced IP Scanner (Download for here!)
When you can’t find the IP of that damn printer, you can rely on Advanced IP Scanner to pull up all that fun information.
This tool is also a good way of hunting down those mysterious IoT device that keeps trying to leech into your network environmen.
