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Microsoft Updates Multiple Sysinternals Tools
wiedzmin writes "A couple of very useful updates have just been released by Microsoft for the ever so popular Sysinternals tool set. The most notable one is ProcessMonitor v2.0 which will now include 'real-time TCP and UDP monitoring.' Another one, released earlier this year — Desktops 1.0, provides a very unique multi-thread way to get multiple desktops running on your Windows box."
How about making it so ProcessMonitor actually fully unloads when you quit. Nothing is more aggravating then having to reboot because a lot of games consider it a hacking tool and refuse to run.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Multiple desktops without annoying flicker. Never understood why multiple desktop managers on windows used window hiding instead of real multiple desktops which were built in into NT family from at least NT4.
Oh well.. Maybe it's too late for me anyway to get used to multiple desktops because now I'm just using 2 lcd panels which provides real multiple desktops and I don't see the point in multiple virtual desktops anymore.
Process monitor looks sweet though.
Mark Russinovich is well known windows system hacker and I always liked his work. Nice to see that after acquisition of sysinternals by MS he still writes software.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Hey, this is the third post, and there hasn't been a flame yet! Has /. been redirected to a more Microsoft friendly audience today?
Hands up if you are reading via MSDN! Come on, admit it!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I don't run Windows, you insensitive clod!
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
With XP home on a machine with 4G of RAM (only 3.something recognized) I got an error saying something about not enough memory to create a new desktop. That was while I was trying to create the fourth desktop. Digging around in the forums that are linked to the app I found that certain apps won't work on anything but the primary desktop. Keystroke bindings tend to get a little wonky. All in all behavior I seem to recall while trying to use that desktop app that NVidia had out for a while. Not worth using.
This is what it would be like, if the majority of people were athiests.
ATHIEST KID: Mom, I'm going to go fuck a hooker.
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, son.
ATHIEST KID: Afterwards, I'm going to go smoke pot with my friends, since it's "not addictive."
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, come home soon!
The athiest kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.
ATHIEST DAD: Hey!
ATHIEST MOM: Hi, honey! I'm pregnant again. I guess I'll just get another abortion, since "fetuses don't count as human life."
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, get as many abortions as you want!
ATHIEST MOM: Oh, and don't go in the bedroom.
ATHIEST DAD: Why not?
ATHIEST MOM: There are two gay men fucking eachother in there.
ATHIEST DAD: Why are they here?
ATHIEST MOM: I wanted to watch them do it for awhile. They just aren't finished yet.
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, that's fine with me!
Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.
ATHIEST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there's a Christian outside!
ATHIEST MOM: We'll be right there!
The athiest couple quickly put on a pair of black robes and hoods. They then exit the house, and run into the street, where a Christian is nailed to a large, wooden X. He is being burned alive. A crowd of athiests stand around him, all wearing black robes and hoods.
RANDOM ATHIEST: Damn you, Christian! We hate you! We claim to be tolerant of all religions. But we really hate your's! That's because we athiests are hypocritical like that! Die, Christian!
THE END
Scary, isn't it?
Sounds like a nice addon.
BUT...
When I install it, and try to switch to another window it just says "Error creating desktop. Not enough Storage is available to process the command". 120GB hard disk and 800MB (of 2GB) not enough for the 60kb application?
And I managed to keep hitting Alt+2, I got ONE desktop working. But Firefox refuses to start in that desktop. Saying "Firefox is already running but not responding".
I want to use this application, but I can't...Like PHYSICALLY can't.
Finally a free multiple desktop program for x64 Windows XP.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Anyone know where we can get the old versions. The pre-Microsoft versions?
One person's 'upgrade' is another's 'hobbled'. Why did the size of so many Sysinternals utilities increase in size from 1-200K to over 1MB for no change in functionality?
For more see posts at: http://www.portablefreeware.com/
For instance, popups for an application on another desktop would show up on another desktop, even with application sharing off. I would get modal dialog boxes that would pop up, lose focus and fall under my current window. Then when I'd go to check on that application, I couldn't interact with it until I found which desktop an orphaned dialog box was hidden on (it wouldn't get a taskbar slot since it was the child of a process on another desktop). Thunderbird was one of the worst offenders when I'd have to re-enter my password.
Also, firefox would some times 'shift' when I'd change windows too many times, and I found that the CPU bug would trip off easier. The deal breaker, for me, was that switching desktops would screw up Office 2000 applications (shifting the internal frames, some times leaving an app unresponsive, etc.), and at work I have to deal with an internal Access application.
Nothing like starting up the editor on one desktop, documentation on another, firefox with google at the ready on another, and the application/database window on the fourth desktop. Access or the application would crash/move itself if I switched back and fourth too quickly too often, and I was constantly waiting on Firefox to restart after causing the CPU bug to trip and take so many cycles that I couldn't switch desktops to the one with the task manager open. The net gain was a complete loss in productivity, as compared to compiz where I find myself about twice as productive.
At home on my 'doze box, I've got dual screens, but it would be nice to have dual screens with a functioning multiple desktop setup. Does anyone have any hints for this, or think Desktops-1.0 will improve upon the situation?
If I could afford it (broke software development major - my rig is always a generation behind what is 'standard', and two behind bleeding edge), I'd probably just get a third screen and be done with it, but multiple desktops is my only viable solution until I have some cash that isn't earmarked for more important hardware.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I have and use all the Systernals stuff, especially Process Monitor.
I just dont agree with him on the Ram Manager issue, but then, I dont have a superdome with 2GB of ram.
I actually clicked through and read about he virtual desktops. Just wow. I haven't followed Windows closely since 98SE and NT4 and it is amazing how little has changed. They still haven't caught up to things us Linux folk have had since FVWM in 1996. Virtual desktops should not be rocket science folks, the fact Windows is still struggling with them is shocking. More cash on hand than the Pope in Rome, as close to unlimited development resources as any mortal entity and they can't do easy stuff. No wonder they worked years and finally (still) birthed the horror called Vista.
They truly are kept alive by fear and ignorance. Ignorance in the mass consumer public that anything else even exists, and that 'all computers' are as unreliable as Windows and fear amongst those who DO know that their hard earned Windows Power User secret lore would be useless in a world without Windows.
Democrat delenda est
Four desktops? No moving windows from one to the next? Need to logout to get rid of any?
Call me when they have FVWM running...
Hooray! Now we can have 4 times the porn!
A quick and easy way to hide your activities from your boss when he comes walking by. ;)
(subject line done in illiterate speak to fit)
I didn't get the impression that this was a DRM issue. I took it more as an anti-cheat measure for on-line play. Given that there are huge numbers of players who think it's neat to win by loading up some warez that gives your game an unfair advantage against other on-line players, it's not too unreasonable to have code that detects some of the more common cheats. Unfortunately, when monitoring software starts hooking itself in places where it's not expected, it can look a lot like the cheating software.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Something that can be gotten around by using an alternative shell like Talisman or others.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I know of at least one piece of anti-copying software which specifically checks for filemon (as it was at the time, this was before process monitor appeared).
Desktops 1.0 looks very similar to the PowerTools multiple desktop tool -- Klunky. For a multiple desktop tool to work well, it has to be fast (no slow zooming effects please), has to allow applications to be moved across desktops easily and ideally should allow applications to exist on multiple/all desktops. Also, 4 desktops max is, in my experience, insufficient. I typically use 6-8 when I really get going with my work. Sorry, but it's still behind whats been available on most X-Windows based desktops and many Windows shell replacements for years, at least from a usability standpoint.
Paul Smith
From there description here,
The Virtual Desktop implementation doesn't seem much more useful than the one in their PowerToys for XP.
I'm glad to hear that it is supposed to be more lightweight. That wasn't something I felt with the virtual workspace implementation for PowerToys. However, at least under GNOME, I haven't experienced the described inconsistency. Has that been an issue for anyone else here, perhaps in KDE or Mac OS X? Or in GNOME?
However, if you've used the PowerToys one, you might be wondering: can I now move a window between virtual desktops? And you might be thinking, from the description above, that the answer is no.
So, you cannot move windows between workspaces; you need to run an explorer process for each workspace; and you have to log off to close desktops.
I wonder how having a separate explorer process for each desktop impacts performance, if at all, seeing as they claim it is a more lightweight approach.
Anyway, without those features, then, like the PowerToys one, it cannot easily fit into my usual workflow, which I miss while at work (Windows XP).
From TFA:
Desktops reliance on Windows desktop objects means that it cannot provide some of the functionality of other virtual desktop utilities, however. For example, Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorer process must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu, most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop. Further, there is no way to delete a desktop object, so Desktops does not provide a way to close a desktop, because that would result in orphaned windows and processes. The recommended way to exit Desktops is therefore to logoff.
About every other OS has had multiple desktops for ages, nicely implemented, now *finally* MS gives it a try, and they fail miserably. Sad.
From TFA: No moving of windows across desktops, taskbar etc. only on 1st desktop, 4x the memory usage of one desktop etc. etc. etc.
They may be updating the Sysinternals tools (after changing the EULA's on them all), but what about Protection Manager? That looked like a great product (and one we were planning to buy), but was conveniently buried the second Microsoft acquired Winternals & Sysinternals.
Protection Manager was launched in March 2006, and removed from the market by Microsoft in November that same year. It was the first thing I looked for when Microsoft acquired Winternals and while I wasn't surprised to see it removed, I've been waiting ever since in the hope that it would be re-launched. That has never happened, and my belief now is that Microsoft deliberately buried it, thinking it would hurt Vista sales.
Protection Manager was a program that gave system administrators a simple and effective way to whitelist the applications that could be run on their network. The idea was that you ran it for a few weeks to generate a baseline list of allowed applications, then turned on protection, after which non authorised programs would be stopped until approved by an administrator. It also allowed you to run individual applications with admin rights, making the management of legacy software far simpler.
Most of the literature regarding the program has gone now, but this is a handy guide:
http://www.inuit.se/?page=130
A few choice quotes from MS:
"the decision was made to withdrawal Winternals Recovery Manager, Defrag Manager and Protection Manager in their current form from the market effective November 17th 2006"
Q. What is the future of Protection Manager?
A. Winternals Protection Manager has been withdrawn from the product line. Many Protection Manager usage scenarios are addressed by the new User Account Control feature of Windows Vista."
source: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/wifaq.mspx
Personally, I don't see that UAC offerse half the features Protection Manager did, and we have no desire to move over to Vista anyway. To me, it looks like Microsoft removed from the market a program that would have been genuinely useful to many of their customers, once again putting sales & marketing ahead of security and their customers.
Had nobody here seen Dexpot?
smart trucks are going to be a a ayyyfdrh melonesdsdsaaaaa
Almost as good as the desktop switcher (in X windows since 1984), and ntop (although it might be more like tcpd). In any event, at long last, they might have some tools nearing functionality of unix circa 1985.
"doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another"
"most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop"
What a piece of junk.
Multiple desktops? woooweee that's amazing!
Pro tip: If you're playing catch up with your competitors from 20 years ago, don't advertise it as a new groundbreaking feature.
Really!?
"IDNHT-4" (I Do Not Have Time To Test This.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not having virtual desktops makes me crazy! I use Linux at home but am forced to wrestle Windows XP at work.
"Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another,... , most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop."
How is this supposed to be useful? This is very half-arsed. I'll be sticking with VirtuaWin thanks.
http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
See my comment http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=984089&cid=25242409
These are indeed "real" desktop switching with win32 isolated desktops, not some window hiding/unhiding like most if not all windows desktop managers do. You can't move windows around desktops as result, but it's not actually very major annoyance compared to sluggishness of all desktop switchers I tried.
Funny thing that "real" desktop switcher app was even included in platform sdk but it never worked since w2k - some problems with permissions.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
We've had decent process monitors on virtually all variants of UNIX since the 1970s. We've had X virtual desktops since the late 1980s. It has always baffled me why these essential features were never implemented for Windows, and why it's only recently that they've become available as add-ons.
Yes, I've used Dexpot on my office, home and laptop PCs. Home and Office have dual monitors and Dexpot allows me to have multiple, dual-screen desktops with almost no problems at all. I have one application which will put it's progress bars on the current desktop instead of the one the application is on and there are a couple of graphical glitches here and there but on the whole I'd thoroughly recommend it.
Don't you mean Slashdot?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Another possibilty: Virtual Dimension. (works fine on my XP 32bit and Vista 64bit)
home
(Desperately avoids the $implications)
I'll settle for the space issues. I hunkered down to get a new monitor, and upgraded from a 19" to a 28" monitor. It feels proportionally right for my desk, so I really cannot imagine any further monitor necessary for a long time.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The Digital Age is about Niches & Long Tails. Some of us care about multi-desktops (no matter how poorly done.)
Having 9 items on my taskbar always irritated me. This feels a little cleaner.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I have a 24 wide in landscape mode, and a 20wide in portrait mode, and use remote desktop (not virtual) too pull 1-3 other full case computers onto the portrait oriented screen as needed.
for the 'real' windows desktop, the start bar runs vertically down the portrait monitor (start button & quicklaunch at the top, time at bottom) for all pc's I remote into I keep the start bar at the bottom so I always know which one I'm woking with.... for example, I have one 38 megabyte excel spreadsheet that takes 5-8 minutes to run on the main PC, or about 1 on my monster which I remote into. The monster is also the one which runs my large print jobs unattended... just minimize and maximize mstc.exe
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
They seriously do this, in their weird onionskin way of hiding sneaky stuff under the guise of stupid mixed with stupid stuff masked under PR noise.
The half extractor for Zip and the half-backup aka System Restore are my favorite examples.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
SWEET, this is one thing that we aren't quite there in Linux, top is the biggest competitor, both with a strength that it can be run from tty and weaknesses in both having to drop down to kill a process and less data/less pretty charts. also top uses much less resources
Somebody doesn't have a clue what "multi-thread[ing]" means, yet uses the term...
Just make sure you never spend a meaningful amount of time using two monitors, once you stop imagining it, you will want it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
With out the code, the worth of these tools drops dramatically.
I have the code from the older versions, I'll just stick with that, thanks.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Hello,
'Process Explorer' has dumping capabilities as well as registry monitor / file monitor capabilities. This could be used to trace the behavior of SecuROM.
Therefore, we do not allow the game to start when this software is active.
We have no immediate plans to allow this software in the future.
Best regards,
SecuROM Support Team
SecuROM on the web: http://www.securom.com/
or via e-mail: support@securom.com
They have always been this idiotic, it's nothing to do with cheating.
They also blacklist software capable of mounting ISOs as virtual discs, as I found out a few years ago. Except in that case, the choice was "Uninstall the software or do not play the games you bought." Fucking blow me Sony. There's cracks everywhere and we both know it, so let me play the damn game.
Desktop 1.0 makes you run up to 4 extra Explorer.exe instances from what I have been seeing. That alone translates out to roughly 11mb extra memory used here in that combined 4 x explorer.exe instances' working set of memory used that I did not eat up before using this program, Desktop 1.0: That's not light, and there are alternate programs that do the same @ less cost and are simpler to configure in my experience. That RAM consumption is not a good side-effect of its usage using 4 instances of the Explorer.exe desktop shell. I also found it hard to configure desktops correctly (how many icons are kept on each one and how to remove ones you do not want on a particular desktop - maybe this is me, but I can't figure out how to get it to do that). I use Windows Server 2003 here, incidentally.
Well, if you ask the SecuRom asshats, of course it's about DRM. It's like asking a cop about lockpicking tools.
If you ask a game company like Blizzard, you'll find the "probable cheating tool" angle, like asking a bank manager about lockpicks.
And if you ask a software developer or system admin about the tools, you'll get the equivalent of asking a locksmith about lock picking tools.
So, yeah, it's what you said. And what flovlingslosh said too. They're not mutually exclusive, and neither perspective is more important than the other, let alone worthy of the arrogant frothing-at-the-mouth tone you took.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Amazing, they have spent more than $40 Billion in the last three years and now will spend their last $20 billion and another $20 billion they don't have. Suppose that's what happens to you when you have nothing of value to sell.
http://goscreen.info/ is a good virtual desktop program. Light resources too even for 9x. However, it's not free. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Is unloading kernel drivers hard for windows? My understanding is that all kernel modules in linux should support unloading via rmmod.
Anybody ever wonder if Microsoft puts things into these tools to make them hide things that they don't want you to inspect? I liked these tools better when it was an independent group of Windows Kernel hackers, rather than an official Microsoft thing. They are still very useful tools, but I can't help but wonder what they might be hiding.
I think these tools also rely on undocumented internal stuff, so it is difficult for a 3rd-party to build clones of them. (Depending on which tool we are talking about)
They're not mutually exclusive, and neither perspective is more important than the other, let alone worthy of the arrogant frothing-at-the-mouth tone you took.
I didn't mean to come off as frothing in support of my take on it. My beef is only with SecuROM. Sorry if it seemed like I was giving the parent a doing over. He said:
I didn't get the impression that this was a DRM issue. I took it more as an anti-cheat measure for on-line play.
And I don't agree. We're talking intent here: SecuROM doesn't do any sort of checking for cheats, and they already stated that they detect it solely to trip up crackers. That a dumper/debugger can be used to find methods of cheating is incidental, so I don't see that position as being well supported.
And if you ask a software developer or system admin about the tools, you'll get the equivalent of asking a locksmith about lock picking tools.
Well SecuROM made the lock and they are the software developer. They're bastards, but they're pretty upfront about what the prevention is for, and it's not cheat prevention or detection.
Once you've set up a two-headed machine, you will never go back. Even if it means you have to buy your own to use on your work machine. It helps that much.
Meh, not really. I had a two-headed machine. Two 19-inch LCD monitors. It was kind of neat, but I didn't actually see the use of it. I can only look at one thing at a time and I know how to alt-tab. I got rid of the other monitor and never asked for a second one again. And in case you're wondering, I am a coder.
In his blog about troubleshooting spinlocks in his wife's PC, Mark talks about how he "Windows-Live-searched" some term he needed to identify.
A bit later, he uses the term again and remarks parenthetically about how it "rolls off the tongue."
After forcing my gorge down, I had to ask the question: was he making an obsequious dig at the stupidity of the messaging terminology used by MS, or is he really fellating Ballmer & co.?
I just gave this a shot. It's faster than virtuawin, which is good. But it still doesn't guarantee the order of windows on my taskbar. At least the window on top doesn't change like it can in VirtuaWin. But still, if I have half a dozen windows on two or more desktops, I'm going to be spending a lot of time looking for the one I want if they're always shuffled when I change windows.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Never passed your English classes, huh?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
My normally trusty kvm switch went tits-up just after I tested procmon. I'm typing this via the on-screen keyboard - now I know how archy the cockroach felt.
You sure it's kernel-mode driver, instead of a Plug-N-Play (PnP) dynamically loaded one? Kernel mode drivers, iirc, load @ system bootup, not during Windows operations. Thus, if it can be popped dynamically into memory @ explorer.exe shell/usermode runtime, it should be able to be "popped" out of memory as well, properly, instead of "hanging around" as people are stating.
You're a college sophomore, right? Almost nobody else reads Dawkins's books, and those who do are disappointed. Look up the word 'tautology'. That's what Dawkins's argument is, at 300 circular, rambling pages.
> just ask any Buddhist. He or she will be happy to explain to you that you don't need any god(s)...
Ask a REAL buddhist (not an American buddhist-lite) and he or she will tell you buddhists have nothing in common with atheists.
They also blacklist software capable of mounting ISOs as virtual discs, as I found out a few years ago. Except in that case, the choice was "Uninstall the software or do not play the games you bought." Fucking blow me Sony. There's cracks everywhere and we both know it, so let me play the damn game.
Sony explicitly granted you the right to play the game when you agreed to the EULA. Sue them for breach of contract.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Dexpot is totally awesome. I use it at work all the time. I'm surprised more people have not heard of it...it is the least buggy of all the apps I've used and I've tried quite a few.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF