The process to run physical disks into vhd images is as simple as possible. The program will display the available physical disks of the computer system upon startup. All that it takes to create a vhd image is to select a path and name for the image (or keep the default suggestion) and select the physical drives that the virtual image should be created of (or keep the default selection).

Disk2vhd will then create the virtual image which can then be used in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V. One of the benefits of using the Sysinternals program is that it can create virtual images of physical drives in Windows

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Usage instructions:

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Disk2vhd is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems since Windows XP SP2 including Windows Vista, Windows 7 and their 64-bit editions. A download is available at the Sysinternals website. It is furthermore possible to run the tool directly from live.sysinternals.com. (via Lee at Download Squad)

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Removing entries from the list of programs that get started during system start will prevent them to be loaded after the next reboot. Inexperienced users should be very cautious on the other hand as the program displays important files that are needed to run the operating system properly.

The update to Autoruns 9.5 added a new tab to the startup manager. Autoruns now displays multimedia codecs “which are gaining popularity as an extension mechanism used by malware gains automatic execution.”

A click on the Codecs tab in Autoruns displays now system codecs as well. It is probably a good idea to hide Microsoft and Windows codecs from the list to make it more accessible.

Autoruns can be downloaded from the Windows Sysinternals homepage. It is compatible with client and server operating systems starting with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

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The program has to be pointed to the location of the programs at first startup. The only requirement is that they have to reside in the same directory structure. It should also be noted that the live urls are also supported and available alternatively. The software management tool will then display its main interface which is divided into two columns. The left column contains categories while the right the descriptions and start links of the software programs listed in those categories.

The three main categories Sysinternals Suite, NirSoft utilities and Windows Utilities are divided further into subcategories like Networking Utilities, Password Recovery or Security Utilities. The Windows Utilities category contains links to dozens of tools provided by the Windows operating system including services configuration and various monitoring and networking tools.

Each entry can be added to the listing of favorite applications which provides quick access to them. A search is also available that can be used to quickly find applications based on their name or purpose.

Windows System Control Center is a helpful software management tool for users who work regularly with NirSoft and / or Sysinternals software programs.

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Windows System Control Center is a frontend for Nirsoft and Sysinternals software programs. The portable software displays the options at first start which is important to make sure the path to Sysinternals and Nirsoft applications is set correctly. Only one directory can be selected that has to contain all applications. This is not such a big problem for Sysinternals because the Sysinternals Live address is given as a backup for that. Most, if not all, of the Nirsoft and Sysinternals applications are portable which means it should not be a problem to move them into one single directory though.

The Control Center will display the applications sorted by publisher and categories but it is also possible to display all applications in one huge list. A click on a category will load the application list which contains a short description of each application listed in that category, a button to launch it and a icon at the beginning that gives information if the application is installed or can be started online.

The application provides access to two additional categories: Windows Utilities and Administrative Tools. Windows Utilities contains links to the Character Map, Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter and Security Center while Administrative Tools lead to Computer Management, Data Sources, Event Viewer, Local Security Policy, Performance and Services.

The tool uses roughly 3 Megabytes of computer memory while running. It’s portability make it an ideal candidate to use on an USB stick together with Nirsoft and Sysinternals applications.

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It’s convenient because it places the information, like the current IP, free hard drive space and Logon Domain and Server, right on the desktop background which means no additional windows, menus or widgets that take up valuable screen estate. It’s also resource friendly because it simply writes a new desktop wallpaper with the information and exits. This does however mean that the information presented could be different from the actual information depending on the last time that BgInfo has been started.

Most information that can be displayed on the other hand does not change that often and I suppose some clever users could come up with a scheduled start every x minutes so that the information that is displayed by BgInfo is accurate.

Each entry can be configured independently from the rest to merge the information perfectly with the desktop wallpaper. The user can select the font, size, color, alignment and the global position of all information.

The software is compatible with multi-desktop systems and runs on Windows 2000 SP4 Rollup 1 and newer Windows operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

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The Sysinternals Live service is basically a way to access the tools from the command line or Windows Explorer directly. The directory containing all the tools is accessible at http://live.sysinternals.com/ and the command to load a tool from that directory would look like the following: \\live.sysinternals.com\

I really cannot see an advantage of this method over downloading and using the tools directly. If you place them on an USB device you can also use them on computers that are not connected to the Internet which is probably the biggest advantage. On the other hand if you access them at the live site you can be sure that you are using the latest version of the tool.

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Page Defrag can defragment all files open for exclusive access at the next system boot or even at every boot. Information about the process and results are printed directly on screen which is excellent to see if the defragmentation was successful or if any errors occurred doing so.

You can naturally run Page Defrag again in Windows to check the defragmentation level of those files as well. It is not necessary to us the software if your defragmentation tool offers this option as well.

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Page Defrag

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Some of the applications that are included in the Sysinternals suite should be installed on every computer such as Rootkit Revealer, Autoruns, Process Explorer and Regmon. This collection might confuse inexperienced users due to the sheer amount of exectuables that are listed in the main directory. It is difficulty to find out what some of the executables are doing, do you know for instance what psfile.exe will do ?

It would have been nice if at least a readme file would have been included to make it easier to understand the executables. A gui would have been even better. I would advise everyone to visit the Sysinternals website to lookup the programs before you execute them.

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ZoomIt displays a configuration menu at the first startup. You can configure hotkeys for various aspects of the tool (hotkey for Zooming, breaking and drawing). It is a great tool for presentations as well, if you run them using a notebook and beamer for instance. Zoom the important part so everyone gets a better view of that part.

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First of all, you need a tool to check them out. You could use the run command and enter msconfig which should display the autostart items or you could use a third party tool like Autoruns from Sysinternals which i recommend for this task.

I will show you how to identify the programs that are running using either msconfig or Autoruns. For the sake of simplicity start msconfig using the windows run command and click on the startup item on the menu.

You see a list of programs that are loaded when windows is starting. You probably can identify some without looking them up, if that is the case and you don´t want them running on your system startup disable them.

Now, let us say you found an entry and don´t know why this is loaded by startup. Head to the CastleCops website and enter the filename that is loaded in the search field. If the file is found you see a description and a recommendation (status). In short, if the status shows Y=YES, you should keep it, if it shows N=NO you can disable it. There is also U=USER for users choice, X for definitely not required (often virii, malicious, spyware) and ? for unknown.

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CastleCops

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