Windows Tools

Introduction

Windows includes several essential utilities that can help you to keep your system stable and running smoothly. Unfortunately, many people don't know about them because they are quite difficult to find. This utility provides direct access to these useful tools, making it easier to use them regularly.

List of Windows Tools

Scan Disk
Power failures, system crashes and switching off your PC without shutting down Windows properly can all cause errors on your hard drive, including lost fragments, cross-linked and invalid references to files and so on. ScanDisk indentifies and corrects these problems.

Defrag
If your computer seems to getting more and more sluggish it may be because your hard disk is fragmented. Windows stores files in lots of little blocks, using any empty space it can find. As time goes on more and more files get spread out all over the disk, and accessing them takes longer and longer. The Disk Defragmenter utility reorganizes your hard disk so that all blocks of each file are kept together, and this makes accessing them much faster.

System Restore
System Restore is a Windows XP utility that allows you to restore your computer to a previous state if a problem occurs, without losing your personal data files. This is done with backup files called restore points. Windows XP creates restore points automatically every day and when significant events occur (for example when you install a new program), and you can also create restore points manually.

Directx Tool
The DirectX Diagnostic Tool is designed to help you troubleshoot DirectX-related issues. It displays configuration information about your computer's audio, video, and input devices.

System Edit Tool
This utility is a program that allows you to modify 4 of the windows configuration files, the Autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini and system.ini. One of the important features of sysedit is that it automatically saves a copy of each of the files when it is first opened making it safer in case you make a mistake by giving you the chance to retrieve the previous copy.

Dr. Watson
Dr. Watson for Windows is a program error debugger that gathers information about your computer when an error (or user-mode fault) occurs with a program. Technical support groups can use the information that Dr. Watson obtains and logs to diagnose a program error. When an error is detected, Dr. Watson creates a text file (Drwtsn32.log) that can be delivered to support personnel by the method they prefer. You also have the option of creating a crash dump file, which is a binary file that a programmer can load into a debugger.