Windows-Tools on CD-ROM (or USB stick)

This list has not been updated since 2007. Links may not work. Use a search engine of your choice.

Having created several bootable Windows CD-ROMs with Bart's PE Builder, I thought how nice it would be if I could use some of the plugins on running systems (i.e. without having to reboot). So in spring 2004 I started searching the Internet for useful utilities that can be run directly from CD-ROM. These were my requirements:

• Must be available free of charge (at least for non-commercial use). If source code is available under a Free Software/Open Source license, that's even better.
• Small is beautiful
• Graphical user interfaces are nice (this is Windows after all...;-)
• My focus is on diagnostic, network and security tools (no games or MP3 players...)

Here's my list. Download the tools, exctract the archives to a folder on your harddisk and burn them on a CD-ROM. I especially like those cute mini DVD-RWs. Or just put them on your USB-stick. If you leave out all unnecessary files (documentation, language files, etc.) and compress all executables with UPX, all these tools together take less than 100 MB of disk space.

If you have any comments or suggestions write to: mail at dirk-loss de.

Optional: Use the tools together with PE Builder:

If you want a really nice CD-ROM, start Bart Lagerweij's PE Builder, tell it to include the tools folder on the CD-ROM (by entering the path as a 'custom directory' on the start screen) and create appropriate entries for the Nu2menu system. By using PE Builder you can optionally run the tools from a clean (rescue) system running completely from CD-ROM. And you have a nice menu that automatically starts when you insert the CD-ROM into a running Windows system.

Desktop Utils

• Bosskey: simple virtual desktop program (Robin Keir. Freeware)
• Count Characters: dump the contents of various combo, edit, list boxes, static, and button fields to the clipboard (Funduc Software. Freeware)
• HoverSnap: free handy snapshot tool with jpg, png, bmp and gif support.HoverSnap can take snapshots of the full screen, active window or a selected area (Hover Inc. Freeware)
• Lens: magnifies the selected area on your screen (Peter Stuer. Freeware)
• Pixie: colour picker that includes a mouse tracker. Run it, simply point to a colour and it will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that colour (Nattyware. Freeware)
• PureText: paste text from a web page, a word document, help , etc. as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source (Steve P. Miller. Freeware)
• Sizer: allows any window to be resized to predefined dimensions (Brian Apps. Freeware)

File Analysis

• BinText: small, very fast and powerful text extractor that will be of particular interest to programmers (Foundstone. Freeware)
• CDMage: performs different tasks with a common CD image files on your harddrive (TWoeMS. Freeware)
• DBF Viewer Plus: view DBF database files (Alex Nolan. Freeware)
• DefragNT: presents the user with many options for disk defragmenting (Andrei Gaceff. Freeware)
• Dependency Walker: scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules (Steve P. Miller)
• Disk Investigator: view and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors. Verify the effectiveness of file and disk wiping programs. Undelete previously deleted files (Kevin Solway. Freeware)
• DiskView: shows you a graphical map of your disk, allowing you to determine where a file is located or, by clicking on a cluster, seeing which file occupies it (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• DupeLocater: find duplicate files (Midnight Blue Software. Freeware)
• ExamDiff: visual File Comparison Tool (Prestosoft. Freeware)
• Explore2FS: WIN32 explorer for Linux ext2fs partitions (John Newbigin. Open Source)
• File Analyser: lists your fixed disk after file types (Kurt Zimmermann. Freeware)
• File List Generator: collects the information about all files and subfolders located under your specified path and generates the list in various file formats (Piyo. Freeware)
• Folders Report: scans a drive or a base folder that you select, and displays essential information for each folder that it finds (Nir Sofer. Freeware)
• Gemulator Explorer: read Atari ST and Apple Macintosh formatted disks (Emulators Inc.)
• HashCalc: fast and easy-to-use calculator that allows to compute message digests, checksums and HMACs for files, as well as for text and hex strings (SlavaSoft. Freeware)
• Lister: file viewer (Christian Ghisler. Freeware)
• MDB View: view mdb files on systems without Microsoft Access installed (Mattia Campolese. Freeware)
• Media Checker: helps you check all your media or only a folder on these media and ensure that all your precious data that you store on them are safe and can be accessed successfully. (Noel Danjou)
• PEiD: executable files identifier (Jibz, Qwerton, snaker, xineohP. Freeware)
• Space Monger: tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system (Sean Werkema. Freeware (v1.4))
• Tiny Hexer: hexeditor for binary files (Markus Stephany. Freeware)
• Virtual Floppy Driver: mount a floppy image file as a virtual floppy drive and directly access the contents (Kenji Kato. Open Source)
• WinInterrogate: file system and process enumeration/integrity tool (vacuum. Open Source)
• xTeq X-Find: find what you are looking for fast (Xteq Systems. Freeware)

File Management

• 1-4a Rename: very easy to use file renamer (1-4a Software. Freeware)
• A43: file management utility with lots of features (B. G. Miller. Freeware)
• CD2ISO: extract .iso images from your cd or dvd disk (Rene. Freeware)
• CdManipulator: read, burn, copy and master CD-ROMs (Y. Kanechika)
• DelOld: remove files matching a certain age and specification (Savilltech. Freeware)
• Disk Wipe: securely delete whole floppy disks or hard disks (Roadkil. Freeware)
• DrvCloner XP: clones disk partitions (Lexun Freeware. Freeware)
• DrvImager XP: creates and restores drive images of FAT32 and NTFS partitions (Lexun Freeware. Freeware)
• dsCrypt: AES/Rijndael file encryption software with simple, multi-file, drag-and-drop operations (Dariusz Stanislawek. Freeware)
• dsDel: a secure file deleter. It overwrites target files with a bit pattern before deleting them (Dariusz Stanislawek. Freeware)
• Easy ISO: create ISO images and burn data to your CDs (Dirk Paehl. Freeware)
• Express Burn: create and record audio or data CDs with any Windows PC with an installed CD recorder (NCH Swift Sound. Freeware)
• ntouch: modify timestamps of files and directories (Florian Balmer. Freeware)
• Pablo Commander: clone of Norton Commander with the look and feel of Windows Explorer. Includes an FTP client (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• PageDefrag: see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• RawWrite for Windows: copies an image of a floppy disk to/from a file (John Newbigin. Open Source)
• Replace in Files: quickly replaces strings matching your search string with the replacement you specify (Emurasoft. Freeware)
• Roadkil's Disk Image: copies an image of a disk to/from a file (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Small CD-Writer: small cd-burning program with nice GUI (russian version) (AV(T) Lab. Freeware)
• Splitter light: splits files or whole directories (Martin Stoeckli. Freeware)
• UUD32 Windows: extract binary files encoded in a variety of formats commonly used to send data through Email and the Internet (UUENCODE, XXENCODE, BINHEX4, MIME BASE-64, MIME Quoted-Printable, MIME Text/Plain, yEncode) (Mark Spankus. Freeware)
• WinTidy: finds backup, object & temporary files that might be candidates for deletion and allows the user to delete one or more of these files. Can be automated (David J. Taylor. Freeware)

File Recovery

• Handy Recovery: restore files accidentally deleted from a hard disk or a diskette (SoftLogica. Freeware)
• PC Inspector: a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems (Convar. Freeware)
• R-Linux: file recovery utility for the Ext2FS file system used in the Linux OS and several Unixes (R-tools Technology Inc.. Freeware)
• Restoration: an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows (Brian Kato. Freeware)
• Smart Recovery: the new data recovery program from CONVAR for Flash Card, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card or any other data carrier for digital cameras (Convar. Freeware)

File Transfer

• BabyFTP: very small anonymous FTP server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• BabyPOP3: very small POP3 server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• BabyWeb: very small HTTP server (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• DropUpload: very light, simple, strong and usefull Upload spooler for FTP management (Zapman. Freeware)
• File Gateway: Peer to Peer file transfer tool, that is friendly with HTTP proxys/firewalls/routers/etc (SteelBytes. Freeware)
• Freeway FTP: both an FTP server as well as an FTP client (Larry Nezar. Freeware)
• HFS HTTP File Server: HTTP server designed for file transfer (Rejetto. Open Source)
• i.FTP: graphical FTP client (Memecode. Open Source)
• Nullsoft Copy: file copying without overloading the network traffic in order to avoid skipping (Stephen Loomis. Open Source)
• Simple Socket File Transfer: transfer a file between two computers using a TCP port of your choosing. Partially completed transfers can be resumed, and files are automatically checked with MD5 to ensure they were received error-free. (Whitsoft Development. Freeware)
• SMBDownloader: start, stop and resume downloads from Windows shares (Dirk Knop. Freeware)
• Synchronize It! V1.69: provides quick comparison and synchronization of files in different folders or drives (Igor Green. Freeware)
• TFTPD32: TFTP server and client, DHCP, SNTP and Syslog servers (Philippe Jounin. Freeware)
• ThirdDir: directory synchronizer which can optionally copy the newer files to the third directory defined by user (R. Vasicek. Freeware)
• Unstoppable Copier: copy files without giving up once an error is encountered (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Wackget: a download manager for Windows. It maintains a queue of files and downloads them (using wget) in the order you specify (Milweed. Open Source)
• WinSCP: connect to a SSH server with SFTP or SCP (Martin Prykryl. Open Source)

Hardware Info

• AIDA32: system information utility (now Everest Professional by Lavalys Consulting Group) (Tamas Miklos. Freeware)
• Bart Stuff Test: long time heavily stress testing storage devices. Bst5 supports testing at file and device level (Bart Lagerweij. Freeware)
• CD-Bremse: set the reading speed of a CD-ROM drive (Joern Fiebelkorn. Freeware)
• Central Brain Identifier: AMD processor identification utility (Viktor Ishikeev. Freeware)
• Data LifeGuard Diagnostics for Windows: perform drive identification, diagnostics, and repairs on a Western Digital FireWire, EIDE, or USB drive. In addition, it can provide you with the drive's serial and model numbers (Western Digital. Freeware)
• DriverView: displays the list of all device drivers currently loaded on your system (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• DTemp: HDD temperature meter (DaleSoft. Freeware)
• FreeSysInfo: uses WMI to discover system and network information on your local machine or network computer. (Nsasoft. Freeware)
• HD Tune: hard disk utility which can be used to measure the performance or to get important information from the hard disk such as the temperature, SMART parameters, firmware version, buffer size, etc (EFD Software)
• HD_Speed: measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your hard disks, cd/dvd-roms and floppy. Realtime graphical display (SteelBytes. Freeware)
• Monitor Test: displays test patterns for repairing computer monitors (Roadkil. Freeware)
• Nero CD/DVD-Speed: CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• Nero DriveSpeed: set the reading speed of a CD-ROM drive (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• Nero InfoTool: (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• ReSysInfo: system information viewer for Windows (Dominik Reichl. Freeware)
• SIV: general Windows utility for dumping lots of useful Windows and hardware info (Ray Hinchliffe. Freeware)
• SIW: read-only / display-only system information tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings (Gabriel Topala. Freeware)
• WinAAM: configures Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) of disk drives (Heise. Freeware)
• WinAudit: performs an exhaustive audit of the hardware and software configuration of your computer (Parmavex Services. Freeware)

Network Tools

• AdapterWatch: displays useful information about your network adapters (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• CommTest: tests the speed of a network between two computers (Roadkil. Freeware)
• CurrPorts: will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• Hey Joe!: simple messaging utility, designed to send messages over Windows local networks and intranets (Alberto Martinez Perez . Non-commercial Freeware)
• IP2: determine your IP addresses - both WAN and LAN (Robin Keir. Freeware)
• IPNetinfo: find all available information about an IP address (Whois): The owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• Ldp: allows LDAP operations to be performed against Active Directory (Microsoft. on Win2k CD)
• Net Send (NT ToolKit): an application with a graphical user interface that allows you to send a text message to a remote Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP computer that is running the Messenger service (Netikus. Freeware)
• POP3 Preview: delete SPAM messages and Viruses before you download them (Pablo Software Solutions. Freeware)
• Popcorn: lightweight e-mail client (Ultrafunk. Freeware)
• Quick Mailer: extremely small, fast program for sending E-mail (pyric interactive. Freeware)
• TCPView: displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• Trout: traceroute and Whois program with GUI (Foundstone. Freeware)
• WhoisThisDomain: allows you to easily get information about a registered domain. It automatically connect to the right WHOIS server, according to the top-level domain name, and retrieve the WHOIS record of the domain (Nir Sofer. Freeware)

Office Apps

• ASCIIvalues: displays the ASCII value of each key as you press it. It shows ASCII character codes for alphabetic, numeric, and symbolic characters (David de Groot. Freeware)
• Atlantis Nova: word processor with RTF support (Rising Sun Solutions. Freeware)
• Calendar: standard calendar window using the Windows Comctl32.dll (Horst Schaeffer. Freeware)
• Character Grid: displays the full character set of the selected font and the ASCII code of each character (in either Hexidecimal or Decimal format) (Angus Johnson. Freeware)
• DateStat: shows date difference (=age) in many ways (1-4a Software. Freeware)
• DBF Explorer: view and edit DBF files (dBase III) (Pablo Software Solutions. Non-commercial Freeware)
• DHB Workshop: fastly change between different number systems (Martin Seelhofer. Freeware)
• firstobject XML Editor: small, fast and simple XML editor (First Objective Software, Inc.. Freeware)
• Foxit PDF Reader: very small reader for PDF documents (Foxit Software. Freeware)
• Irfan View: very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer (Irfan Skiljan. Non-commercial Freeware)
• MetaPad: small, fast text editor to replace Notepad (Alexander Davidson. Freeware)
• MiniAIM: tiny AOL instant messaging client (Jon Honeycutt. Freeware)
• Printserver: small HTML 3.2 frames enabled off-line browser to print and preview html documents and images (Jan Verhoeven. Freeware)
• TextMaker Viewer: Open, view and print all common word processing formats (DOC, ODT, SXW, RTF, HTML, , ...) (SoftMaker. Freeware)
• TinyIRC: IRC client for Windows of miniscule proportions, weighing in at only 83K for the main executable (Tom Bampton)

Process Viewer

• CurrProcess: displays the list of all processes currently running on your system (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• OpenedFilesView: displays the list of all opened files on your system. Optionally, you can also close one or more opened files, or close the process that opened these files. (Nir Sofer. Freeware)
• Process Explorer: shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• Process Mate: lists all active processes and resolve their unique IDs, paths and number of threads (Weird. Freeware)
• ServiWin: displays the list of installed drivers and services on your system (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)

Registry Tools

• Autoruns: shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• Autostart Viewer: allows you to see every autostart on your system, all on the one screen. In addition, it gives you complete control over the autostart references, and allows you to modify or delete them at will (DiamondCS. Freeware)
• ERUNT: registry backup and restore for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP (Lars Hederer. Freeware)
• HijackThis: lists all installed browser add-on, buttons, startup items and allows you to inspect, and optionally remove selected items (Merijn. Freeware)
• LoadOrder: see the order in which devices are loaded on your WinNT/2K system (Sysinternals. Freeware)

Remote Control

• GenControl: simple desktop remote control program for Windows 2000 or Windows NT networks (Gensortium Ltd. Open Source)
• IVT: VT220, Telnet, SSH emulator (with serial console support) (Ruurd Beerstra. Freeware)
• PuTTY: free implementation of Telnet and SSH (Simon Tatham. Open Source)
• VNC Viewer: small VNC viewer (Real VNC. Open Source)

Other GUI Tools

• AtomicTime: synchronizes you computer's built in clock with the clocks of one or more free time servers on the internet (Tom Wuttke)
• FavouritesView: displays the list of all your Favorties (of Internet Explorer browser) and bookmarks (of Netscape/Mozilla browsers) in a single page (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• MyUninstall: an alternative utility to the standard Add/Remove applet of Windows operating system. It displays the list of all installed application, and allows you to uninstall an application, delete an uninstall entry, and save the list of all installed applications into a text file or HTML file (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• Neutron: time synchronizing program that retrieves the accurate time from one of several specialized time servers on the Internet (Robin Keir. Freeware)
• NewSid: change a computer's SID after a system has been cloned (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• ShortCutsMan: displays the details about all shortcuts that you have on your desktop and under your start menu (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• Stinger: stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses (McAfee. Freeware)
• Timer: simple program to time onscreen events this is it. Just click the window and it will start timing. Click again and it will stop (Robin Keir. Freeware)
• Windows Update List: displays the list of all Windows updates (Service Packs and Hotfixes) installed on your local computer (Nir Sofer. Freeware)

Command Line Tools

• 7za: Command line version of 7-Zip archiver (Igor Pavlov. Open Source)
• agrep: Approximate Pattern Matching GREP (Various. Non-commercial Freeware)
• arpflash: uses arp who has messages to identify live hosts within a given IP-range (yrg. Freeware)
• atnow: command-line utility that schedules programs and commands to run in the near future (Nir Sofer. Freeware)
• Bamboo Utilities (collection): collection of several useful commandline utilities (Bamboo Software / Frank Brown. Freeware)
• bbie: extracts all bootimages from a bootable CD-Rom or ISO image file (Bart Lagerweij. Freeware)
• bfi: creates a FAT12 floppy image from files (Bart Lagerweij. Freeware)
• bkren: renames files matching the search regexp with the replace regexp (Boolean Dream. Freeware)
• bootpart: easy tool for adding additional partitions to the Windows NT multi boot menu (for example, add the OS/2 boot manager or a Linux partition) (Gilles Vollant. Freeware)
• browstat: troubleshooting NetBIOS problems (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• builtin: displays or manages the builtin Administrator or Guest account, without knowing what the current name is (Marty List. Freeware)
• byte2hex: converts any byte from a file or stdin to a format of your choice (hex, dec, oct, ...) (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• bzip2: freely available, patent free (see below), high-quality data compressor (Julian Seward. Open Source)
• cb: command-line program to send input to the clipboard. It comes most useful when trying to capture the output from another program. (Decadence of Evolution. Freeware)
• cdrtools: burning CD-ROMs (Joerg Schilling. Open Source)
• ClipText: copies plain text from the Clipboard to a file or from a file to the Clipboard (Horst Schaeffer. Freeware)
• cmdline: Command Line Retrieval Tool (DiamondCS. Freeware)
• Contig: single-file defragmenter that attempts to make files contiguous on disk. Its perfect for quickly optimizing files that are continuously becoming fragmented, or that you want to ensure are in as few fragments as possible (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• creatfil: creates a blank file of a specified size, filled with space characters. This is useful for testing the behavior of tools, applications, and setup programs under conditions of low available memory on a hard disk (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• cURL: transfer data from or to a server, using one of the supported protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, DICT, TELNET, LDAP or FILE) (Daniel Stenberg. Open Source)
• cutfile: view and dump only a specific portion of a file (from and to). Also supports stdin and stdout (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• datapipe_http: allows a local port (localport) to be opened in order to pipe a connection to another port (remoteport) on local/remote machines. With proxy support (net-square solutions. Freeware)
• DelayExec: Delay the execution of a program. Could be useful if you want something to wait before executing, such as on Windows startup or in a network login script (RJL Software. Freeware)
• devcon: acts as an alternative to Device Manager. Using DevCon, you can enable, disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices. (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• dig: powerful tool to investigate [digging into] the DNS system (ISC / Nicholas Fong. Open Source)
• diskmap: provides information from the registry about disk characteristics and geometry, and reads and displays data about all of the partitions and logical drives defined on the disk (Microsoft)
• diskpart: enables storage configuration from a script, remote session, or other command prompt (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• DispChg: list available diplay modes for the active display and set new display mode (Armin Harnisch. Freeware)
• DNSdump: script to import and export your DNS server configuration, on Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 (Dean Wells)
• DumpWin: displays lots of system information. Very nice. (Network Intelligence India. Freeware)
• DWHICH: Scan the executable PATH and print out the full path of the executables will execute when the passed program name is entered on the CMD prompt (WebGeek, Inc. Freeware)
• efsdump: shows you what accounts are authorized to access encrypted files. Takes wildcards (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• ELDUMP: dump the contents of a NT event log as text (Jesper Lauritsen. Freeware)
• Eval: lets you type in math expressions and it will display the answer. It supports addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, power, boolean logic, bit math, and works with both hex and binary numbers as well as decimal (Dave Navarro. Open Source)
• EventSave: move the events from the current logs into backup files (Frank Heyne. Freeware)
• extract: extracting files from floppy disk images (Gilles Vollant. Freeware)
• fcomp: binary file compare with support for multiple files and some options (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• File Uploader: allows the uploading of one or many files (wildcards allowed) to a HTTP 1.1 server (PUT method) or a FTP server. (Noel Danjou. Freeware)
• fileacl: view and set ACLs on any NTFS local or remote drive, change ownership. Uses backup and restore rights to view/change ACL/ownership on non accessible files/dir (Guillaume Bordier. Freeware)
• Filecase: rename one or more file names and/or directory names to uppercase or lowercase (Steve P. Miller. Freeware)
• ForceDisconnect: force disconnect of network volumes (Freeware)
• Forensic Aquisition Utilities (collection): collection of utilities and libraries intended for forensic use (G.M. Garner. Open Source)
• Forensic Toolkit: contains several Win32 Command line tools that can help you examine the files on a NTFS disk partition for unauthorized activity (Foundstone. Open Source)
• Format144: unconditionally formats standard 1.44 MB floppies under Windows (Denis Petrov. Open Source)
• FPing: ping command with more options (Wouter Dhondt. Freeware)
• FPipe: source port forwarder/redirector. It can create a TCP or UDP stream with a source port of your choice (Foundstone. Freeware)
• Fport: Identify unknown open ports and their associated applications (Foundstone. Freeware)
• fsum: fast and handy Command Line utility for file integrity verification. It offers a choice of 11 most popular hash and checksum functions for file message digest and checksum calculation (SlavaSoft. Freeware)
• gbtools (collection): Windows NT cmd-line Utilities from Guillaume Bordier (Guillaume Bordier. Freeware)
• GetLocale: get locale and codepage settings (Armin Harnisch. Freeware)
• getmac: obtaining the MAC (Ethernet) layer address and binding order for a computer running Windows 2000, locally or across a network (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• Global: makes any application or utility recursive. It will recursively execute any command in the current directory and in all subdirectories under the current directory (Steve P. Miller. Freeware)
• gplist: lists information about the applied Group Policies (Arne Vidstrom. Freeware)
• gpresult: displays information about the result Group Policy has had on the current computer and logged-on user (Microsoft)
• gsar: General Search And Replace on files (Tormod Tjaberg. Open Source)
• guid2obj: maps a GUID to a distinguished name. In Microsoft Windows 2000, each security principal (user, group, or computer) is identified by a unique security identifier (SID) in the form of a GUID. In Active Directory directory service, each object has a distinguished name. This tool enables you to associate the two (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• handle: displays information about open handles for any process in the system. You can use it to see the programs that have a file open, or to see the object types and names of all the handles of a program (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• hex2byte: converts any formatted number (hex, dec, oct, ...) from a file or stdin into bytes (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• hostname: very simply utility that takes either an IP address (e.g. 123.456.7.8), or a host name (e.g. ftp.ntinternals.com), and performs a translation into its inverse form (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• hwinfo (Nero Info Tool hardware info): hardware information (Erik Deppe. Freeware)
• icd2img: copy and convert an image that was burned directly to a CD or DVD to a different location (TeraByte Unlimited. Freeware)
• Joeware Tools (collection): collection of several useful utilities, especially for Active Directory management (Joe Richards. Freeware)
• LADS: lists all alternate data streams of an NTFS directory (Frank Heyne. Freeware)
• lanfile: program for sending and receiving files with many features (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• linkspeed: displays the speed of the connection between computers on a network (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• listdlls: shows you the full path names of loaded modules - not just their base names (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• lynx: text browser for the World Wide Web (Various / Jim Spath. Open Source)
• macmatch: search for files by their last write, last access or creation time without changing any of these times (Arne Vidstrom. Freeware)
• MBRWizard: directly modify the MBR, with the capability to set partitions active for booting, delete or hide partitions, back up and restore copies of the MBR, as well as sort the partition entries (Roger Layton. Open Source)
• md5deep: compute MD5 message digests or SHA-1 message digests on an arbitrary number of files. Can recursively examine an entire directory tree (Jesse Kornblum. Open Source)
• memory: viewing the amount of physical memory in a machine (Savilltech. Freeware)
• Mirror: makes exact copies of directories (or entire directory structures) with minimal operations (Dominik Jain. Freeware)
• mkbt: create any boot- floppy/image from any win32 platform with any media size (Bart Lagerweij. Freeware)
• mtee: sends any data it receives to the console and to any number of files. Useful if you want to watch and record the output from a batch file or program. (Ritchie Lawrence. Freeware)
• mturoute: uses ICMP pings of various sizes in order to determine the MTU values on the path between itself and the target system. It also includes a traceroute like mode where it will attempt to determine the MTU of every hop in the communication. (Eli Fulkerson. Open Source)
• netio: measures the net throughput of a network via NetBIOS, TCP and UDP protocols (Unix only supports TCP and UDP) using various different packet sizes (Kai Uwe Rommel. Non-commercial Freeware)
• NetPWAge: displays the password age for all accounts in the specified domain, both users and machines. Very useful for cleaning out old, unused accounts from the NT SAM database (OptimumX)
• Netwox: toolbox of over 180 programs to find and solve network problems (Laurent Constantin. Open Source)
• NirCmd: write and delete values and keys in the Registry, write values into INI file, dial to your internet account or connect to a VPN network, restart windows or shut down the computer, create shortcut to a file, change the created/modified date of a file, change your display settings, and more (Nir Sofer. Non-commercial Freeware)
• NTFSinfo: shows you information about NTFS volumes. Its dump includes the size of a drive's allocation units, where key NTFS files are located, and the sizes of the NTFS metadata files on the volume (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• NTLast: security log analyzer. Identify and track who has gained access to your system, then document the details (Foundstone. Freeware)
• Ntrights: view and set user privileges from a command prompt (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• openssl: SSL library (Open Source)
• Outwit (collection): access the windows clipboard, manipulate the windows registry, read document properties, select data from relational databases, resolve shell shortcuts, access the windows event log (Diomidis Spinellis. Open Source)
• pdftohtml: converts PDF files into HTML and XML formats (Open Source)
• pdftotext (Xpdf): convert Adobe PDF documents to simple text format
• Permcopy: copies share-level permissions (Full Control, Read, Change) from one share to another (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• plink (PuTTy): command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends (Simon Tatham. Open Source)
• pmdump: dump the memory contents of a process to a file without stopping the process (Arne Vidstrom. Freeware)
• poke: run-time process examination tool (andreas / Toolcrypt. Freeware)
• PortQry: reports the port status of target TCP and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) ports on a local computer or on a remote computer (Microsoft. Windows 2003 Server Support Tools)
• procinfo: displays detailed information for a process (yrg / Toolcrypt. Freeware)
• promiscdetect: checks if your network adapter(s) is running in promiscuous mode, which may be a sign that you have a sniffer running on your computer (Arne Vidstrom. Freeware)
• pscp (PuTTy): SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy (Simon Tatham. Open Source)
• psftp (PuTTy): SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP (Simon Tatham. Open Source)
• PsTools (collection): command-line utilities for listing the processes running on local or remote computers, running processes remotely, rebooting computers, dumping event logs, and more (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• ptime: will run any specified command and parameters, and measure the execution time (run time) in seconds, accurate to 5 millisecond or better (Jem E. Berkes. Freeware)
• rconip: win32 replacement for Novell's RconJ designed to look like rconsole (Paul Pergamenshchik. Open Source)
• Rehash: console-based hash calculation tool supporting many algorithms (Dominik Reichl. Open Source)
• rmchar: removes all the occurences of a specific byte in a file (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• robocopy: powerful file copying tool (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• rsh: Remote Shell client (Ilya Evseev. Open Source)
• sdelete: securely delete existing files, as well as to securely erase any file data that exists in the unallocated portions of a disk (including files that you have already deleted or encrypted (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• SetACL: powerful set of routines for managing Windows permissions (ACLs) from the command line, from scripts and from programs (Helge Klein. Open Source)
• setowner: change the ownership of a file to any account. This works if you have the 'Restore files and directories' user right (Arne Vidstrom. Freeware)
• sid2user: query SAM and to find out a SID value for a given account name and vice versa (user2sid) (Evgenii B. Rudnyi. Freeware)
• sleepy: waits a custom amount of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days) and then exits or executes a program specified by the user (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• sqlcmd: commandline-based SQL query tool: allows you to specify a database, username and password (if necessary) and a SQL query you wish to perform. The results are either output to the screen, or alternatively output into a log file that you specify (AnalogX. Freeware)
• SrvInfo: displays information about a server or workstation, including available disk space, partition types, and the status of services (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• stcppipe: a simple datapipe supporting multiple clients at the same time (it uses a thread for each client), binding of a specific local IP and also support for a list of allowed hosts (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• strace: debugging/investigation utility for examining the Windows NT system calls made by a process. Its usage is similar to strace (or truss) that is currently available for Linux and other UNIX flavors (Todd Sabin. Open Source)
• Streamfind: will report the existence of Streams on an NTFS partition (ISS. Freeware)
• strings: search files for ASCII or UNICODE strings (Sysinternals. Freeware)
• subinacl: obtain security information about files, registry keys, and services, and transfer this information from user to user, from local or global group to group, and from domain to domain (Microsoft. Windows Resource Kit)
• sudppipe: advanced UDP proxy/datapipe/packets forwarder and modifier with multiple functions. (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• tcping: operates similarly to 'ping', however it works over a tcp port (Eli Fulkerson. Open Source)
• TestDisk: check and undelete partitions (Christophe Grenier. Open Source)
• unrar: decompresses RAR archives (Eugene Roshal. Freeware)
• Unxutils (collection): collection of several GNU utilities (GNU / Karl M. Syring. Open Source)
• unzip: extraction utility for archives compressed in .zip format (Info-Zip Group. Open Source)
• uptime: analyzes a single server for reliability and availability information. It can work locally or remotely (Microsoft)
• upx: Ultimate Packer for eXecutables (Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer, Laszlo Molnar. Open Source)
• userdump: SID Walker that can dump every user in a domain in a single command line. It gives you all the information that UserInfo does, but it lets you specify the number of users you want to walk (Thor. Freeware)
• wakeup: wake up PCs via Wake-on-LAN (Freeware)
• wget: software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP (special version with OpenSSL library included) (wget team / Bart Puype. Open Source)
• WhosIP: find all available information about an IP address: The owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more (Nir Sofer. Freeware)
• Winexit (collection): exit Windows from the command line (Dominik Reichl. Freeware)
• xecho: echo command with special features (Armin Harnisch. Freeware)
• xor: (Luigi Auriemma. Open Source)
• Zip: compression and file packaging/archive utility (Info-Zip Group. Open Source)

Useful Links

More interesting tools

• SysInternals
• Joeware
• Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools

Portable Software

Mostly for USB sticks, so some of these tools may not work from CD-ROM.

• TinyApps.org
• The Portable Freeware Collection
• Wikipedia: List of portable applications
• Stand Alone
• Portableapps.com
• kikizas.net USB applications

Tool collections for instant download

Try one of these if you don't want to download every program in my list separately.

• TheInfoBox.com Portable USB Apps
• Portable Office Exec
• Zepfanman.com Free Windows Software To Go
• UBCD for Windows
• reatogo´s BartPE 500+

General Freeware sites

• Pricelessware.org
• OSSwin Project
• NoNags
• Planet Jeffrey