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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Sysinternals Live: Grab all the latest Sysinternals utilities in one place

Sysinternals Live
A few years ago Microsoft bought a company called Sysinternals that makes some of the most useful free utilities for Windows. This week the company launched Sysinternals Live, a single webpage with a huge list of Sysinternals utilities. The site isn't much to look at, but it's a one-stop shop for the latest version of any Sysinternals utilty. If you want to make sure you're always using the most recent version of a Sysinternals app, you can just grab it from the Live page without digging through a bunch of product pages to find it.

Here are a few of our favorite Sysinternals apps:

Process Explorer - This is a replacement for the Windows Task Explorer that gives you detailed information about your CPU and RAM usage as well as running processes.

Autoruns - This utility lets you easily manage the programs and processes that launch every time Windows starts.

Contig - This is a powerful command-line disk defragmenter.

You can access these programs by typing \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\contig.exe or autoruns.exe or procexp.exe into your Windows Explorer. You can run programs this way even if you haven't previously downloaded and installed them. Or if you just want easy access to the installers, you can also use http://live.sysinternals.com/contig.exe.

If you know the name of the utility you want, you can create a browser bookmark that will always link to the latest version.

[via ZDNet]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

MSConfig Cleanup cleans the cobwebs out of Windows startup

MSConfig Cleanup
If you've ever used the Windows utility MSConfig to remove your Windows startup menus, you've probably noticed that the applications aren't really gone. They're just disabled. You could go and delete them using a registry editor or a more powerful tool like AutoRuns. Or you could permanently delete entries using MSConfig Cleanup.

Here's how it works. You bring up MSConfig by clicking on "Run" in your Windows Start Menu. Navigate to the "Startup" tab and unselect any applications you don't want to run when Windows loads.

Then fire up MSConfig Cleanup and you should see a list of disabled programs. Check the boxes next to the ones you want to permanently remove, and click "Clean Up Selected." Honestly, we're not 100% certain why you'd want to use MSConfig and MSConfig Cleanup instead of AutoRuns, but if you've already disabled a bunch of programs using MSConfig, this free utility could provide a fast way to make your changes permanent.

[via gHacks]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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