Site: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
You may already know this package of free system utilities. Originally SysInternals was a website with developers providing free windows system utilities. I guess it was bought by Microsoft at some point.
There are lots of useful utilities in the SysInternal. However, not all utilities are attractive to you since some of these are strictly useful for IT person or Software Developers. There are also many familiar shell utilities if you come from UNIX (du, whois, strings)
But here are the three most interesting utilities to me.
- Process Explorer : Process monitor that shows related files, registry keys, loaded DLL files ,company name and. You can easily see what’s going on in your computer.
- Autoruns : shows complete list of auto startup programs.
- ZoomIt : Powerful presentation tool. You can zoom and draw lines on the screen. Ctrl + 1 will start the screen zoom by default. Zoom In and Out can be done with the mouse wheel.
This is a Process Explorer in action.
There is a fun screen saver too. Blue Screen screen saver simulates the blue screen of Windows System Crash. It is very similar to the real one and it even shows reboot screen!
Microsoft provides several useful freeware utilities in its download website. PowerToy series is the most renounced utilities, but also there are some user friendly multimedia softwares such as PhotoStory 3.
PhotoStory 3 is a wizard program that let users to create a wmv movie file with a set of images.
You can
- edit , rotate, or enhance image quality
- apply special image effect.
- insert text message at the position you want (top , middle, bottom , left, right , center)
- define custom motion or transition effect. The program automatically set transition upon importing images.
- record and insert your narrative voice anywhere you want.
- set a background music using an existing music file or a generated music from a predefined set of customs musics.
It is very user friendly and provides preview button in each step for easier preview.
Selecting images
Here is the sample file that I made LINK It’s only about 1 MB. Enjoy. 
Here is the website for you to download PhotoStory 3.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx
Well, these goodies do not come with the default Windows XP. They are created by the developers and they are free. That’s why there is no support from Microsoft for these products. By the way, according to the link, these will only work with Windows XP, not Vista.
There are several great useful utilities that can be downloaded and setup separately. I think some of them are very useful.
Here are the ones that I like
1. Tweak UI. As the name of the program explains, you can tweak many default properties of your Windows system. (Default user UI, Explorer Settings, Logon - Auto logon, Desktop Icons, Mouse Settings.) It is very useful.
2. Alt-Tab Replacement.
It is a wonderful replacement of traditional ALT-TAB Taskswitcher, indeed. Small preview image appears in the left side when you move onto the next application.The background color is depend on the Desktop Color defined in the Display option of the Control panel.
Download TaskswitchPowertoySetup.exe
Some more of the interests are
- ClearType Tuner : When installed, it will help to display the fonts in more distinct and clear way. It is a great help for the people who use labtop with small screens.
- Virtual Desktop Manager: When you have at least 10 or more applications running at the same time, you do feel that your screen is very small and tight and hoping for a larger monitor. But you can solve the limited desktop space by using the Virtual Desktop Manager. You can have several desktops and you can switch each desktop easily. Later in the upcoming blog entry, I will discuss more about the other Virtual Desktop applications that I have used. PowerToy’s Virtual Desktop Manager is nice, but not the best.
- Image Resizer: This is a very useful and simple utility to resize images that you can access it through the shortcut resize menu in the right mouse click popup menu.
So please go ahead and try for yourself!
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