{"id":1029,"date":"2015-02-27T14:58:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T19:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2015-02-27T14:58:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T19:58:15","slug":"stuff-to-throw-in-your-cwindowssystem32-directory-and-path-variable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/?p=1029","title":{"rendered":"Stuff to throw in your C:\\Windows\\System32 directory and %PATH% variable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah… WINKEY+R and cmd.exe, two awesome means of launching programs and commands within a Windows environment. In my humble opinion, WINKEY+R is probably one of the best keyboard shortcuts to know,\u00a0 especially if you work in the tech industry. I mention this because I find myself using this keyboard shortcut a lot and it’s nice just to call out the name of a program rather than hunting around for it in a GUI. Need to see trace route for google.com? WINKEY+R then tracert www.google.com. Need to do a force shutdown? WINKEY+R then shutdown -s -t 0 -f . The list goes on but today we will be adding to this list because we all know that there are a myriad of utilities out there that don’t come with Windows installations by default and it’s nice to have them sitting in your System32 directory or in your %PATH% variable to quickly execute. I will warn you that some of the utilities I will recommend may make it easier for your system to be used as a pivot point if your system gets compromised. Additionally some of these tools may be detected as ‘viruses’ by anti-virus programs. Lastly, this article isn’t a comprehensive list of ALL the utilities that could be added or desired. It’s merely a means of getting you started. <\/strong>With that being said, let’s continue.<\/p>\n

Cygwin:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those of you who want to give your Windows system more a UNIX\/Linux feel, I strongly recommend installing Cygwin and customizing your install to have all the Unix based goodies that your little heart desires. Once you’ve done this, add the \/bin\/ directory to your %PATH% variable. Now you can use egrep <\/strong>instead of findstr<\/strong>. Also you can now use wget, curl, ssh utilities suite, netcat, perl <\/strong>and other powerful scripting languages from cmd.exe!<\/strong> (Provided you have selected to install these during the customization part of your Cygwin install.)<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cygwin.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Sysinternals Tools:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Russinovich <\/a>deserves a medal of some sort. Practically every tool he makes for Windows is a must have if you work on Windows systems. So feel free to download and copy all of these .exe files to your System32 directory:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sysinternals\/bb842062.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

I personally use autoruns.exe<\/strong> all the time as a much greater alternative to msconfig and hijackthis.<\/p>\n

Putty software suite:<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you forgot to install the ssh utilities under Cygwin, don’t worry and put these in your System32 directory:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.chiark.greenend.org.uk\/~sgtatham\/putty\/download.html<\/a><\/p>\n


\nOther useful tools to have:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s a list of some other tools that are very useful to have in your System32 directory:<\/p>\n

Bluescreenview<\/a> – great utility for getting information on BSODs<\/p>\n

coretemp <\/a>– (pretty self explanatory)<\/p>\n

cpuz<\/a>– very useful tool for getting information about your CPU, Motherboard, and RAM<\/p>\n

fciv<\/a> – Microsoft’s hash checksum utility<\/p>\n

gpuz – <\/a>like cpuz but for graphics cards<\/p>\n

p95 –<\/a>useful tool to benchmark your system<\/p>\n

rufus<\/a> -Create bootable USB drives with picky distros (not all work with YUMI)<\/p>\n

Speccy <\/a>-great alternative to msinfo32 that is better in some departments<\/p>\n

usbdeview <\/a>-useful for getting information about usb devices that have been plugged into your system<\/p>\n

vncviewer
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

YUMI<\/a> – create multi linux distro and OS bootable flash drives (see: http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/?p=973<\/a> )<\/p>\n

Of course this list isn’t complete but I strongly feel that this is a good start. If you feel inclined to suggest some tools\/utilities to add to the list feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah… WINKEY+R and cmd.exe, two awesome means of launching programs and commands within a Windows environment. In my humble opinion, WINKEY+R is probably one of the best keyboard shortcuts to know,\u00a0 especially if you work in the tech industry. I mention this because I find myself using this keyboard shortcut a lot and it’s nice … Continue reading Stuff to throw in your C:\\Windows\\System32 directory and %PATH% variable<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[732,729,726,733,41,736,444,741,740,739,730,728,731,737,738,735,727,64,734,708],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-path","tag-cwindowssystem32","tag-curl","tag-exe","tag-linux","tag-mark-russinovich","tag-microsoft","tag-prime95","tag-rufu","tag-speccy","tag-stuff","tag-system32","tag-throw","tag-unix","tag-usbdeview","tag-variable","tag-wget","tag-windows","tag-windows-7","tag-yumi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zitstif.no-ip.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}