regmon
June 5, 2008
Need to monitor how a application is accessing the registry ? Regmon is your tool. There is a bit of a trend away from writing things in the registry, (which is a good thing), but there are a lot of old applications you come across in the corporate word that know one knows how to install or why it works. With regmon you can discover if there are any application setting lurking deep in the registry. You can get regmon from sysinternals at the link below.
Filemon
June 5, 2008
Filemon has saved me a lot of time over the years. With filemon you can monitor how a specific process is accessing the file system. It reports file reads, writes, errors etc. We have used countless times to help diagnose file system permission issues with vendor products which more times then not have poor error reporting. You often end up using it in combination with regmon, (Registry monitor), to work things out. Filemon is one of the great tools from sysinternals.
Keypass
June 5, 2008
Hands up if you are always forgetting your login and passwords to website, servers, databases, key card, mobile phone etc. Added to this you get it security guys that like to have policies that force people to change there password every month, (when will they learn that this just makes people have passwords like March08 and April08 next month). One app we use to get around these hassles is Keypass. Keypass can store all your passwords encrypted with a optional key file for added protection. It also runs from a USB key and is a must have portable app. You can get it at
For all the linux people out there there is also a version called kepassx.
Foxit pdf reader
June 5, 2008
Don’t you hate when ever you set up a new computer and you have to download the 20 meg download for adobe acrobat. Foxit Reader is a great replacement for acrobat reader. At around 2.5 meg it is fast to load and can be run as a portable app on your usb key. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy at http://www.foxitsoftware.com
Allnetic Time Tracker
June 3, 2008
In any project it is always good to know where you spend your time and is especially important in agile development. In our team developers sign up to complete a task in a given period usually around the day to half a day time period. Things don’t always go as planned and some tasks can take longer for various reasons ranging from being pulled into meetings to you underestimated the task. I use a cool little time tracker called allnetic to track my time. Some of the cool features that are useful are:
- Can track time at a project, task and sub task level.
- prompts you when you stopped typing to see if you want to include the time, (eg you go to lunch and forget to stop your time tracker).
- Can produce time reports in various formats and you can even create your own by customizing several standard templates.
- Allows you to include comments as you are recording time. This is good for me when I hit a problem so I can work out later why something took longer then estimated.
- Portable, you can just copy the exe onto a usb key and run it where ever you work
- Good for contractors working for multiple clients as you can track time, invoice clients and provide them with a detailed log of your activity. Clients are usually impressed when you turn over detailed log of the time you worked on their project.
- If someone comes over to your desk for some help or you get foxed away from your development task you can quickly switch the time to another task and add a comment
We do not use allnetic as a management tool but rather a developer aid to help manage their time and help provide better estimates based on past activity. In your team the tool should be optional not mandatory as you want developers to want to use it. You should get them to try it they might be surprised where their time goes, (easy way to highlight how much time can be wasted in administration and meetings).
Check it out at www.allnetic.com
Process Explorer
June 2, 2008
I have always been a bit disappointed in the standard windows task manager. It simply does not give enough information. For years I have been using process explorer from sysinternals which is now owned by Microsoft.
One of the great things process explorer can do is find the handles of open files. How many times have you tried to delete a directory or file and windows reports something has it open. With Process explorer you can hit Ctrl+F type in the file that is locked then it will find the handle to the file. From there you can simply right click on the handle and select close. Much faster then rebooting.
Process explorer is available from Microsoft from the link below.
Process Explorer
