Bruce Atkinson

FileMon is a utility by Sysinternals. It is simple and easy to use and may help get you out of bind when you don’t know why you are getting an error message. It is amazing how many different problems this utility will help solve. You can read more about Sysinternals utilities here.

Last fall I used FileMon to help us solve a perplexing problem. We had an important piece of software that wasn’t performing well, so they upgraded the workstations that it was running on. Even though the workstations were now more than powerful enough, they would still pause and miss collecting some of the important data that they were collecting. The vendor wasn’t any help, and the users were losing faith in the software.

I figured I would just sit down and monitor the software using Regmon and Filemon. As I watched the application it became obvious to me that it was looking for a file called none.wav. One of the things that happens when you look for a file that doesn’t exist, is that each folder in the path is searched. If you have large folders, or folders on a network drive, and folders on a network drive that is on a server on the WAN somewhere, that search can take a while. It might even cause the system to hang a little while the search is going on.

The application had the ability to play sounds to alert you when an event occurs. If you didn’t want to hear a sound that event was set to “none”. This caused the application to constantly search for the file none.wav. The vendor was unaware of this.

Creating a short silent file called none.wav and putting it in the application folder, stopped the constant searching and cleared up the problems we were having. A problem that had been researched for a long time without coming up with a solution was solved in a few minutes with Filemon.

Filemon
Regmon (like Filemon but for the Registry)
Process Monitor(FileMon and RegMon combined)

I frequently use “Send to Desktop” by right clicking on something and sending a shortcut to my desktop. Today I went to do it on my XP desktop and it didn’t work. This specific workstation’s XP has been resident since XP first came out and has been heavily upgraded (multiple motherboards and hard disks). I figured I was out of luck on getting it fixed. I did a search and found a great site containing a bunch of tips and fixes for XP. If you are still using XP it’s worth checking it out. Maybe you have something broken and don’t realize it.

There are so many little things like this that can drive you nuts and waste your time. I expected to end up on what I call a Star Trek mission. It’s when I end up taking many detours to find a solution and get carried completely away from my original intended goal. I hate when I’m looking for solutions to problems that have nothing to do with what I’m trying to accomplish. The sad thing is that it seems to be the norm when working on computers, especially your friends and relatives computers that seem to have so many things wrong you don’t know where to begin.

It’s always nice to find solutions in just a few minutes. Thanks Doug for creating your site.

http://dougknox.com

I have been living under rock as far as this software is concerned. My past experience with keyboard macro/playback software has left me tainted. I recently started using this as a way to automate some daily tasks that I do with “My Life Organized”. I soon learned that this is an extremely powerful tool that can be tailored by scripting to your precise needs. The more you use it the more you find things that you can use it for. It’s a must have tool, and it’s free.

AutoHotKey web site.

It is very useful in it’s most simplest implementation and as you become more comfortable with it it has the power to grow with you.

My main workstation has had Windows XP on it since it first game out. I’ve never had to rebuild it. So after several years my “All Programs” menu has become out of control. Each time I clean it up by organizing it with more folders, it becomes more difficult to find stuff as it gets buried in the mess.

Shaun Harrington has come to my rescue with his excellent product called SmartStartMenu. It’s main function is to give you a toolbar that allows you search all your programs. You can customize where it looks and how it behaves. I have mine search my desktop, my Start Menu, and a couple of other directories.

To use it, you just type some letters and it displays all the items that contain that text. On my system typing “Visual” brings up a list like this:

I use the option that highlights the most recently used item. It is so fast and easy to use. If you have a lot of stuff in your program menu or on your desktop then this utility will save you tons of time.

If that was all it did it would still be great, but it has a few other tricks. If you used the Send To option in Windows 95 PowerToys, then you’ll like that SmartStartMenu will add “Copy Pathname” and “Copy Short Pathname” to your explorer context menu. SmartStartMenu can be used as a replacement for the Run dialog. It is also easy to quickly navigate your folder structure on your hard disks.

Shaun doesn’t ask for any money for this utility. He does have a link that let’s you buy him a beer. So try it out and buy him a beer.

http://www.planetharrington.com/products/smartstartmenu/

For a couple of years now I have been using a product called ClipCache Pro. This program saves everything that you put in your clipboard. You are then able to go back through ClipCache and re-paste it at a later time. You can create folders so that you can organize your clips. I just have few folders. I put some common code snippets in one folder. Another folder has some common items that I paste (ie. user names, server names, paths). You can give a clip a friendly name and the contents can be things you don’t like to type. I have another folder containing common answers or solutions that I have to use over and over again in e-mail or our help desk system. I like the fact that it puts my clips in a database that I have can locate on a network drive or even a flash drive.

I find it extremely useful when I have to create documentation, test plans, or installation instructions. I can just take the screen shots as I go along, without having to deal with them. I can then go back and include the screen shots in the document that I’m creating. It’s one of my “must have” tools. I always feel crippled sitting with someone else, helping them do something and they can only have one clip at a time.

I must say it is amazing what passes through your clipboard. After using it for a few months you will be amazed at all the things that you put into the clipboard.

Click screenshot for larger image:

Many years ago I started using Textpad as a replacement for Notepad. I soon discovered several features that made my life so much easier. I now don’t know what I would do without them. I’d be interested in hearing if there are any other similar products that include these features. Both features that I will describe here involve the “Find in Files” functionality.

The first aspect of the “Find in Files” function is the fact that Textpad will display the results of the search and clicking on each line brings you directly to the file and place in the file that the search text is found. The file is opened in a new tab so the search is still available. Before 5.0 the search results ended up in it’s own tab. In 5.0 the search results ends up in a special window at the bottom of the Textpad window.

The example that I’m using is searching a Dr. Watson file for “when:”. This let’s you see the frequency of abends on a PC that is having problems.. This search will result in a list of abends with the date/time of each abend. Double-Clicking on one of the search result entries will bring you right to the start of the Dr. Watson entry in the log file.

Find in Files dialog:

Results of searching a Dr. Watson log file (click image below for larger image):

The second example is useful when you need to replace something in several text files that you know is unique and safe to change.

1. Using the “Find in Files”, do the same as the Dr. Watson search above except, instead of giving a specific file name, use wildcards.
2. Pick the top level directory of the files you want to search
3. Check the “Search subfolders” option
4. The search results will contain all the lines that contain the search text.
5. Right-click in the search results and click on “Open All”.
6. All the files named in the search results will open up in seperate tabs.
7. Use the “Replace” option under the “Search” menu to identify what to replace. Click the “All Documents” option and then click “Replace All”.
8. The text will be replaced in all the files.
9. Under the “Files” menu click “Save All” and “Close All”.It’s easy and fast.

If you can’t quite get something unique across all files you can do it several times using unique search criteria that meets your needs. The nice thing about doing it this way rather than a command line tool is that you can easily see how good your search is and whether or not it’s safe to really do the “replace all” before actually doing it.

One thing that I have found to improve my productivity is to migrate as much as I can to a USB flash drive. After adopting PowerBasic as the main language I use to write utility type of software, both GUI and command line, I decided to see how well it works from a flash drive. I use three Powerbasic products and a PB aware editor:

• PowerBASIC Compiler for Windows
• PowerBASIC Forms
• PowerBASIC Console Compiler
• JellyFish Pro Editor

Total size on my USB drive is 30 MB. They are licensed so that you can use them on as many computers as you want as long as you can only use them on one at a time. By having them installed to my USB drive that insures that is true.

I find them very easy to use. Quick to launch, compile, debug, and run and I have them with me all the time. PowerBASIC makes small fast EXE’s with no runtime required. When an install is required I create one with Inno Setup.

I just noticed that TCI has been updated. It’s tough to keep up with new software releases. I hate it when a program that I use everyday gets updated with features I really want and I don’t catch that they’ve been updated. As much as I hate programs that phone home, I’ve gotten use to them. It looks like this was updated late last year.

TCI is sold by JP Software and it is called Tabbed Console Interface. What it does, is let you run multiple consoles in a single window with a tabbed interface. The new feature that I like is that you can preset the tabs that you want loaded when you start TCI.

I typically use 4NT for most of the command line stuff that I’m doing. I still need to test with the standard windows command shell (CMD.exe) if I’m creating something for a server or box that doesn’t have 4NT. I’ve also been trying out PowerShell to see if it is worthwhile for me to switch to it. Now I can load them all up at once. It is easy to attach to other consoles (ie. putty, cygwin, etc.) as you open them up and add them as tabs. I will usually end up with two TCI windows open with multiple tabs in each one.

Click image below for larger image: