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Old 09-11-2012, 10:48 PM
 
3,614 posts, read 3,496,367 times
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I know there are a few fellow techs roaming these boards. Anyone feel like posting their toolkit of their most-used (or just accumulated) apps for fixing those nasty problems? When I first started my job as a tech (thank god no longer doing that), I spent a few days trying to find out some common tools, but didn't get any real hits. Figured I might share my toolkit with others looking for this kind of information.

My old job had us using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and SuperAntiSpyware as the two programs for malware removal. Everything else I accumulated over time to help with various issues.

Over the period of a few years, I ended up shoving all this onto a 16GB flash drive.

For 90% of problems, these generally were enough.

If I ran into rootkits (which happened rather frequently by the end of my time there)
  • TDSS Killer - Detects and removes a lot of rootkits.
  • aswMBR - Detects and removes a lot of rootkits
  • GMER - Rootkit detection and removal tool.
I often ran into a lot of odd problems which resulted in me building a small collection of diag-tools, etc.
I also kept a compressed folder full of a bunch of "clean" files that I saw were attacked regularly (pulled from known working machines and added as needed) as well as registry fixes for many file types (some malware would hijack .exe extensions).

I'd occaionsally need to run benchmarking on hardware as well, or run a stress test. For those:
I have a separate disk with Memtest for running memory.

I also kept a directory full of removal tools for every anti-virus program I've run across. McAfee, Norton, AVG, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Panda, Trend Micro, Microsoft Security Essentials, Zone Alarm, and a few others. You can usually find these by typing in the anti-virus name and "removal tool." ESet carries a nice list of them.
ESet list of Removal Tools for common A\V programs

I think perhaps one of the more interesting removal tools I've run across is the "Dot Net Framework" cleanup tool. Not officially supported by Microsoft, but it has helped tremendously in fixing dot-net framework update issues on every version of Windows I've had to work on. It strips out the entire dot-net framework, and you just reinstall as normal.

On top of that, I keep the Service Packs for every version of Windows since XP as well. I thought about offloading those onto a CD, but never bothered.

I'm sure there are tons of other bits I'm missing that I probably only used once and disposed of, or are buried ten folders deep on my flash-drive. But that's the bulk of it. Anyone have something to add? Alternatives? Tales of Caution?
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Old 09-12-2012, 01:07 PM
 
Location: Whittier
3,004 posts, read 6,257,490 times
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To interject: In a good, well designed corporate environment, with a good group policy, MDT/SCCM, firewalls and Endpoint (MSE) a lot of these sorts of tools can be shelved.

But as a freelance, private tech or working in a small business what you mentioned are invaluable.

For me, in addition to a lot of your tools:

Ninite - Install or Update Multiple Apps at Once is very useful.

A USB wireless NIC /w drivers of course is handy for when you do fresh installs, don't have a cable handy and the internal NIC is down or not installed.

Ubuntu on a USB or just a CD is good if you need to get in and salvage some files from a corrupt or inoperable Windows install.

There was a Sysinternals or maybe just a hack that got around "greyed" out options in Windows, so you can click on disabled radio buttons. It might be that unlocker that you have posted.

And of course just general chipset/manufacturer drivers that I use and come in contact with.

I also like and use Glary Utilities.
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Old 09-12-2012, 01:46 PM
 
15,913 posts, read 20,157,064 times
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I would have to say for the nastiest computer/network problems I've ever had to fix I have only one tool:



Diagnostic tools are good if the system is in a state that you can run them....

Diagnostic tools are almost completely worthless with intermittent problems...

I noticed in the OP all the tools listed deal strictly with Windows, what tool would people use if the user can't get to the documents folder/directory? (/dev/dsk/c2t1d3s1 didn't mount)

Or the system can't access the network? (/etc/rc2 .d/S69inet is corrupted).....

Last edited by plwhit; 09-12-2012 at 02:29 PM..
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Old 09-12-2012, 03:27 PM
 
16,294 posts, read 28,472,289 times
Reputation: 8383
Quote:
Originally Posted by plwhit View Post
I would have to say for the nastiest computer/network problems I've ever had to fix I have only one tool:



Diagnostic tools are good if the system is in a state that you can run them....

Diagnostic tools are almost completely worthless with intermittent problems...

I noticed in the OP all the tools listed deal strictly with Windows, what tool would people use if the user can't get to the documents folder/directory? (/dev/dsk/c2t1d3s1 didn't mount)

Or the system can't access the network? (/etc/rc2 .d/S69inet is corrupted).....
Or an ACL was applied to the wrong interface, or in the wrong direction

Yep, there's only one tool that's going to resolve that
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Old 09-12-2012, 03:31 PM
 
3,614 posts, read 3,496,367 times
Reputation: 911
Quote:
Originally Posted by plwhit View Post
I would have to say for the nastiest computer/network problems I've ever had to fix I have only one tool:



Diagnostic tools are good if the system is in a state that you can run them....

Diagnostic tools are almost completely worthless with intermittent problems...

I noticed in the OP all the tools listed deal strictly with Windows, what tool would people use if the user can't get to the documents folder/directory? (/dev/dsk/c2t1d3s1 didn't mount)

Or the system can't access the network? (/etc/rc2 .d/S69inet is corrupted).....
I'm a Windows tech. Add your own for *nix.

The tools presented are great when you have a running machine. You're right though when it comes to actual troubleshooting, you have to know where to look first--and only the three pound lump of meat in your head can actually do that.
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