Useful Windows 9x, ME, 2000 and XP Diagnostic Programs

~HeadShot~

Skilled
I thought I would make a post about some of the useful Windows Diagnostic Programs I have found out there which might help some people. If you find any others that have helped save your bacon or solved problems that left you scratching your head then please post them below:

Memory

GoldMemory - http://www.goldmemory.cz (A great program that runs in DOS off a floppy disc and will check your memory to make sure it isn't faulty.)

Memtest86 - http://www.memtest86.com is another great tool for testing RAM. It creates a bootable floppy which can run indefinitely without user intervention. It's released free under the GPL, so there's no shareware registration to deal with.

Disk Management

Norton Utilities - http://www.norton.com (I have only recently started using this program, mainly WinDoctor which scans your drive for errors in things like the registry, ActiveX programs and the like. Just as a note though I only find the WinDoctor useful in this, but that is because I have having loads of things running on start up and the other bits seem pointless, but post below if you disagree with me)

Virus Scanners

AVG Anti Virus - http://www.grisoft.com (AVG is one of my favorite virus scanners. I have seen people have so much trouble with Norton and McAffee that it is unbelievable. Norton sometimes having to be removed by editing registry entries and not living happily with McAffee on the drive. AVG is free and is unobtrousive. Also it is very quick at scanning the drive.)

F-Prot - http://www.f-prot.com is another free virus scanner that is very good at finding the virus's out there.

avast! Home - http://www.asw.cz/avahome.htm is another free virus scanner
that's more lighter and quicker than the above ones. This program can be used on a single computer and is free after registration - http://www.asw.cz/register.htm

Diagnostics

3dMark - http://www.madonion.com 3dMark is probably the most well known of the 3d graphics diagnostics programs out there and the forums usually buzz with help and advice on how to get the most out of your graphics card.

SiSoft Sandra - http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra/start.htm SiSoft Sandra is a great program to find out loads of information about your PC. You can do comparisons of things like your memory and CPU against other benchmarks for CPU's so you can see how close or far away they are.

Others

MS Windows Error Messages 2.2 - http://download.com.com/3000-2086-5948808.html?tag=lst-0-23 (this is a handy program that I don't have much experience with. If you are getting numerical error messages and have no idea what they mean, you can input the number into this program and it will tell you what it means.)

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 1.0 - http://download.com.com/3000-2086-10105020.html?tag=lst-0-7 (Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is tool designed to analyze Windows systems for common security misconfigurations. Version 1.0 of MBSA includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP systems and will scan for missing hot fixes and vulnerabilities in the following products: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 and 5.0, SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 and later, and Office 2000 and XP. MBSA uses a version of HFNetChk to scan for missing hot fixes and service packs for Windows, IIS, and SQL Server. MBSA will create and store individual XML security reports for each computer scanned and will display the reports in the graphical user interface in HTML. )

Some Useful Resource Sites

Common Windows error messages - http://www.tipsdr.com/common-errors.html

LabMice.net Resource Center for IT Professionals - http://labmice.techtarget.com/

Security News Portal - http://www.snpx.com/newsticker.html

InfoSysSec - http://www.infosyssec.net/index.html
This list is far from complete but we will keep it updated with anything else you find.
 
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