Even though Microsoft has promised to drop the prices associated with some of the retail standalone versions of Windows Vista (specifically the Home Premium and Ultimate editions), the fact of the matter is that the SKUs of the latest Windows client will still be far from cheap. In this context, you have to take advantage as best you can of the ecosystem of software solutions built around the operating system. And there are plenty of free offerings that are worth a whole lot more than what you didn't pay for them. The Sysinternals brand dates back to 1996, and was associated with the Windows operating system from the get-go. The brainchild of developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell Sysinternals has become synonymous with a collection of advanced system utilities.

"Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you're an IT Pro or a developer, you'll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications," reads an excerpt of the official presentation of Sysinternals adding a description of the tools made available for free. "File and Disk Utilities - utilities for viewing and monitoring file and disk access and usage. Networking Utilities - networking tools that range from connection monitors to resource security analyzers. Process Utilities - utilities for looking under the hood to see what processes are doing and the resources they are consuming. Security Utilities - security configuration and management utilities, including rootkit and spyware hunting programs. System Information - utilities for looking at system resource usage and configuration. Miscellaneous Utilities - a collection of diverse utilities that includes a screen saver, presentation aid, and debugging tool."

Initially available as standalone downloads, the Sysinternals Troubleshooting Utilities are now part of a single package dubbed the Sysinternals Suite. Via the suite users will be able to access both tools and help files, Microsoft offering in all over 50 items. The Sysinternals suite, of course, contains all of the top 10 most wanted Sysinternals tools including: Process Explorer, AutoRuns, Process Monitor, PsTools, PageDefrag, RootkitRevealer, TcpView, BgInfo, BlueScreen and NewSid. The tools are designed to integrate with various Windows operating systems, not just Windows Vista.

Sysinternals Suite 1.0 Build 26.02.2008 can be downloaded from here.