Ever wondered why your sysadmin has locked down a specific feature of your desktop PC - like say stopping CD/DVD autorun or stopping you from blocking Microsoft Security Center alerts? They don't do something without good reason, but it's normally to stop the helpdesk being pounded with calls.

How do you acquire the knowledge it takes to be a system adminstrator? Normally, through judicious application of four-letter words - all of them being 'time'. However, there are utilities out there which can short-cut some of the knowledge required. I've been 'kicking the tyres' recently on just such a utility - called 'The Ultimate Troubleshooter' from AnswersThatWork.com. Normally, anything with 'Ultimate' in the title tends to fall woefully short of such an epithet. However, The Ultimate Troubleshooter or TUT as it's known usually, has features particularly useful to system admins working on system images to improve performance, security and managibility.

TUT costs around £15 for a single license and gives detailed information on the current tasks the system is running along with their associated services and processes. TUT also documents what programs fire up when you boot the system. For each service TUT gives its findings, views and importantly its recommendations on what to do with the service. Take for example, Microsoft's Error Reporting Service, ERSvc, TUT concludes its view on this service as "For 98% of users this is as useless a service as there can be." It then shows how to stop the service.

I should have a more detailed report on TUT, ready later this month.

16 Aug 2007