Here is a very nice free product that gives administrators the ability to compare files and folders for differences.

This can be very useful if you are not using replication, but would like to have the ability to check folders for inconsistencies this can be very helpful. As an added plus this also has a command line interface so you can script this if needed.

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ComponentSoftware Diff (CSDiff) is a free advanced file difference analysis tool for Windows. Use it to analyze what changes have been made between two revisions of the same file, folder or archived folder. CSDiff is commonly used to analyze program source files, HTML documents and MS-Word documents.

Netstat displays active TCP connections, ports on which the computer is listening, Ethernet statistics, the IP routing table, IPv4 statistics (for the IP, ICMP, TCP, and UDP protocols), and IPv6 statistics (for the IPv6, ICMPv6, TCP over IPv6, and UDP over IPv6 protocols). This tool is very useful when you are trying to diagnose open connections to other computers.

A good use for this tool is to run this on a computer when you think that the computer may be talking to an unauthorized computer without your knowledge (example : spyware).

If you suspect your computer is making connections to another computer and passing information without your knowledge, you can use this to see which connections/post are currently in use and use this information to try and diagnose the issue at hand.

Occasionally you will need to use FTP and you will not have any software.  I have found these 2 links very useful in diagnosing many problems.

List of FTP commands for the Microsoft command-line FTP client

List of raw FTP commands

Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the Microsoft .Net platform. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site.

The files are saved straight to a folder of your choice in the format you specify or to the clipboard or printer. No more 'Print Screen'... open image editor... paste from clipboard... crop... export. Just double-click the form or press enter, and whatever is visible below the form is captured.

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using it's built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

This software can capture Video, Audio, and has a built in editor to allow for captions to the video (if you so choose).

You can download and use it completely free for your personal and commercial projects as CamStudio and the Codec are released under the GPL.

More information and download locations can be found at CamStudio.org

A little known program in Windows XP called "iexpress" will allow users to create EXE installation files. These EXE files can be used to automate muli-part VBS(VBScript) and BAT(Batch) files that you hae into a nice installation package that can be run by other people that you give the EXE too.

This can be helpful if you have a complex multi-part batch file that calls other smaller batch files and VBScript files and you would like to have it all rolled up into one small package so your users don't get confused.

Step 1
Click on the Start Menu and click "Run"

Step 2

This article describes how to change the port that Remote Desktop listens on.

Note The Remote Desktop Connection Client for the Mac supports only port 3389. 3389 is the default port.

You can use the Remote Desktop feature in Microsoft Windows XP Professional to connect to your computer from another remote computer.

Warning The Remote Assistance feature in Microsoft Windows XP may not work correctly if you change the listening port.

To change the port that Remote Desktop listens on, follow these steps.

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Recently I was looking for a good free file compression utility. I needed to have the ability to distribute the program to companies, and also have built in command line support.

I ran accross this little jewel called IZArc. This program is freely distributed and has all of the good freatures that you normally see in WinRAR and WinZIP (without the cost). The ability to deal with multiple formats is also a major plus.

IZArc is the ultimate archive utility supports many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in multilanguage support.

Every once in a while I need to open a command prompt in a certain place. The way to do this is to go to the command prompt and navigate your way to the directory that you need to be in, or open that directory by typing out the entire directory name exactly as it should be.

I've found it easier to just install a registry hack that allows you to right click on any folder and then open a command prompt there. Your options to do this are to install the Windows XP power toy located on this page or you can use this simple registry entry and just install it yourself.

I work on alot of servers in my job, and sometimes its hard to remember which server I'm on, or even sometimes which user I'm logged in as. This registry entry will rename the "My Computer" icon to %USER% on %COMPUERNAME%. for those of you that use Terminal Services on a daily basis you can understand the frustration when you have just deleted a file on the wrong server and now you have to recover it. This can be used as a quick check just to make sure that you are in the right place before you do a unrecoverable operation.

You can download the registry file here. Just click on the link and save the information in a location that you like (with a .reg extention) and then double click it to run.