Manage disk usage, delete files permanently, monitor streams, and more. Here are 7 free tools every administrator should download . Follow our daily tips on: Twitter | Facebook | blog | Web | RSS

Some of the best tools for managing Windows are available for free. Check out these 4 downloads every administrator should know about . Follow our daily tips on: Twitter | Facebook | blog | Web | RSS

Windows 7 has a few tools you can use to peek at programs and services that run automatically at startup or logon, most notably the System Configuration utility, Msconfig. But that built-in tool pales in comparison to the undisputed heavyweight champion of the category. Find out about the free Autoruns...

One of the easiest ways to convert a FAT or FAT32 disk to NTFS is to use the command-line Convert utility . Here's a look at how it works. Follow our daily tips on: Twitter | Facebook | blog | Web | RSS

For an exhaustive inventory of system configuration details , Windows 7 offers three tools that provide varying levels of technical information. Here's an overview of the three tools . Follow our daily tips on: Twitter | Facebook | blog | Web | RSS

We’ve got two free utilities this month, both designed to make the life of an IT pro a little easier by helping you manage resources. Over time, the network PCs in your organization may become cluttered with multiple user profiles, especially if they're shared computers used by many people. These profiles...

More than two years ago , TechNet Magazine Editor-in-Chief Josh Hoffman wrote about a great little utility called RoboCopy Gui—and that article became the single most popular article we’ve ever published! Now, however, that place in history is very likely to be superseded as Josh tells you about an even...

More free utilities! Being a systems administrator can be difficult, but whether your organization is large or small, the right tools can significantly ease the burden. In this month’s column, Greg Shields presents an overview of 19 free tools created by Microsoft. These handy utilities cover many of...

Free and Fun—Make your own screencast! Whether you are having probl ems yourself getting something to work correctly on your computer and are working with tech support, or you're trying to help someone else solve such problems, you have probably spent hours describing or explaining events over and over...

Creating virtual machines (VMs) with Hyper-V is very easy, and installing operating systems and applications in a virtual machine is as transparent as in the physical world. But what if you have existing VMs tha t were used with Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1? Luckily, these older VMs...

The March 2009 issue of TechNet Magazine is now available online. In this issue, we delve into Office Communications Server. Learn about the new features in OCS 2007 R2, see how you can extend your R2 deployment to legacy devices, get advice on securing your OCS environment, discover how you can manage...

Have you noticed that we’ve been sneaking extra utilities into the spotlight for you? Our Utility Spotlight column now appears twice each month, once in print and again in an online version about a totally different utility. That’s 2 for the price of 1— Free! Lance Whitney shows you how you can use the...

Over at the Deployment Guys blog, Michael Murgolo gives us an update on how his Elevation PowerToys work with the current beta of Windows 7 . You may remember this very popular set of utilities that Michael created and discussed back in our June 2008 issue . Of course, there are some changes to User...

The February 2009 issue of TechNet Magazine is now available online. Discover how you can use Excel and SharePoint to provide Business Intelligence in your organization, learn about logging and recovery in SQL Server and learn how to maintain a better database, see how you can automate the deployment...

The Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack made life easier for lots of IT administrators—or at least it did until Windows Vista was released. Many of the tools just didn’t work with Windows Vista. Now, as Edward Dake describes , the Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) enable administrators...

Lance Whitney describes the free Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager, a handy utility that can help you and your users easily copy, delete, and backup and restore files from a USB flash drive, as well as perform other useful tasks. Want more free utilities? Check these out .

In the March 2007 Utility Spotlight column in TechNet Magazine , Jay Munro described SyncToy , a free utility that made it easier to copy and back up files from your computer to the network, external drives, or other computers. Now there’s a new version of SyncToy, and Jay tells you all about it . ...

The complexity of systems today m akes troubleshooting more difficult than ever. It’s harder to keep track of what has changed, when, and how that relates to everything else. If something goes wrong, chances are good that users will have a hard time figuring out what has changed on their computers, whether...

In every issue of TechNet Magazine , Greg Steen (a practicing IT professional) discusses free and relatively inexpensive tools and utilities that help him do his IT work and "getting the job done."  In the November issue, Greg looks at mapping data graphically with MapForce, creating and...

Whether you develop Web content yourself or just support your local webmaster, here's a free Microsoft utility to make your job easier. Lance Whitney shows how the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar lets you peek behind the scenes in order to troubleshoot misbehaving Web pages.  

Virtualization techn ologies can help contain costs in the datacenter and across your entire IT environment, but is your infrastructure ready? Jay Sauls and Baldwin Ng show you how the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, a network-wide infrastructure assessment tool, can help you better understand...

  One of the advantages of using VMs is that you can store them in an offline state as VM images, then wake them up whenever you need them. But keeping an increasing number of computing environments waiting off­line presents a maintenance challenge. Many software update mechanisms rely on systems...

Suppose one of the PCs you support is acting up—freezing, crashing, blue screening. Is some piece of hardware failing? Is some newly installed application causing trouble? Or could it be faulty memory? One way to find out for sure is with the free Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic utility. This tool...

Even if you’re not headed back to school, it’s academic— our September issue will take you to the head of the class. Features Many organizations rely on ISA Server 2006 to secure their environment, but few take the important step of securing ISA Server itself. Alan Maddison provides a guide to using...

Software installed using the Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) technology writes certain files and registry settings, but leftover Windows Installer configuration information can cause problems when you try to update or uninstall an application. Lance Whitney shows you how you can solve the problem using...