STOP IGNORING THESE WINDOWS TOOLS
Why you must use Sysinternals
Windows tools don’t get much more powerful than Sysinternals – a collection of programs to tweak your desktop, manage your files and reveal what Windows is getting up to in the background. Launched in 1996 and bought by Microsoft 10 years later, Sysinternals is still regularly updated by one of its founders, Mark Russinovich.
You can download and run each tool individually (browse the full list at www.snipca.com/39284) or just get the Sysinternals Suite from www.snipca. com/39285, which includes all the tools in a single 43MB ZIP file (for each tool mentioned below, we’ve included the full file name so you’ll know which one to run). You can even run the tools online, as we explain in the box (opposite right).
Boot Windows faster
Your Windows user-account password helps prevent other people accessing your files, but if you’re the only person who uses your computer it’s a pain having to enter the password each time you turn your compute on.
Autologon (autologon.exe) speeds things up by storing an encrypted version of your password, then entering it for you when Windows launches. To use it, run the tool, enter your Windows password in the box at the bottom (Autologon will fill the other fields for you, based on the account you’re currently using), then click Enable. When you next launch Windows, you’ll whizz past the login screen and straight into your user account. If you want to log in to a different account, simply hold the Shift key down while Windows is starting. To turn off Autologon, run the tool, then click Disable.
Remove startup items
Another way to make Windows launch faster is to remove unnecessary startup items. Autoruns (autoruns.exe) lists not only which programs are set to launch when Windows boots, but also drivers, codecs and much more. You can view each category by selecting the relevant tab, or use the Everything tab to see the whole lot in one go. To prevent an entry from running when Windows boots, simply untick the box next to it (only untick items that you recognise).
If in doubt, right-click an entry, then select ‘Search online’ to run a web search on it (see screenshot below). The latest version of Autoruns, released in August, includes a new dark mode – click Options, Theme, then Dark to turn it on. Bginfo (bginfo.exe) makes your desktop more useful by overlaying it with text showing system information such as how much hard-drive space you have left, the time and date Windows last booted, and how much memory is installed (pictured below). By default, Bginfo displays all available information on your desktop, but you can change this by deleting items from the pane on the left (white text on a black background). If you want to add an item, double-click it from the list (top right) – to add multiple items, hold Ctrl while selecting them, then click Add. You can also change settings, such as the position of the text (click ‘Position…’), while the options along the top let you adjust the size and colour of the font.
All text will be wiped from your desktop when you restart Windows. If you want to clear it without rebooting, open Bginfo, select all text in the righthand pane, press Delete, then click Apply.
Windows 10 has a virtual-desktop tool that lets you create multiple desktops (press Alt+tab, then click the ‘+’ button at the top), then switch between them. If you’re running an earlier version of Windows – or just want to try a more customisable virtual desktop tool – run Desktops (desktops.exe). This lets you create up to four virtual desktops and choose the keyboard shortcut to switch between them – right-click the Desktops icon in the system tray (see screenshot above), select Options, then make your shortcut selection. You can also switch between desktops by left-clicking the Desktops icon, then selecting the preview window for the one you want to use.
Manage tasks better
Task Manager (press Ctrl+shift+escape) lets you quickly close programs that have frozen – simply select the appropriate entry, then click close. But what if you can’t find the relevant task? That’s where
(procexp.exe) comes in. Run the tool, then click and drag the target icon in the top toolbar (see screenshot above right) on to the window of the program that’s not responding. Process Explorer will now highlight the process belonging to that program. To kill it, simply right-click and select Kill Process or just press Delete.
Process Explorer also colour codes all running tasks so you can see which are taking up the most system resources (darker colours means more resources), and lets you quickly find specific tasks using the search box (top right). It even links up with Virustotal to scan your tasks for known viruses. To enable this, open the Options menu, then select Check Virustotal. You’ll now see a new Virustotal column in Process Explorer that shows how many antivirus engines (Kaspersky, Norton, Mcafee and so on) consider the process to be a potential virus. Click on the Virustotal score to see a detailed breakdown of the results.
Analyse folders
When you want to find out how many files are in a specific folder and how much disk space they’re using, Disk Usage (du.exe) tells you in seconds. It’s a Command Prompt tool, so to run it you need to open File Explorer (press the Windows key+e), navigate to the folder containing your Sysinternals tools, press Alt+d to highlight the address bar, then type cmd and press Enter. In the
Command Prompt window, type du, followed by the folder you want to scan. So to scan your Users folder, type du c:\users. Disk Usage will then scan this folder along with all subfolders, before returning the results.
Zoom and annotate your desktop
When you’re sharing your desktop during a video call or presenting at an event, you may want to zoom in on a detail or annotate what’s on the screen. Run Zoomit (zoomit.exe), then click OK. To perform a simple zoom, press Ctrl+1, then use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
If you want to annotate what’s on the screen, press Ctrl+2 – this freezes your screen, letting you draw on it using different coloured pens (hold the Ctrl key and use your scroll wheel to adjust the pen’s thickness).
Ctrl+z lets you undo the last annotation, which clears the screen. If you want to add text to your annotations, press T, then start typing– to return to annotating using the pens, press Escape.
To change the shortcuts, double-click the Zoomit icon in the system tray (see screenshot above).