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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!
Team Slashdot may not like Windows very much; but when you have to get your hands dirty with Windows, having the sysinternals tools makes your life less unpleasant.
Plus, Mark was the one who discovered and publicised the Sony rootkit, when all the professional AV guys were too incompetent or traitorous to say anything. That ought to give him enough karma to go unflamed on Slashdot once or twice.
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
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.