14 DAY TRIAL // At just a month since the last refresh of Windows Sysinternals, Microsoft has introduced a new update designed to kick up a notch a few components of the collection of tools developed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. According to Curtis Metz, program manager, Microsoft Sysinternals, the latest range of updates push to the next level VMMap v2.5, Disk2vhd v1.4; Sigcheck v1.63; Autoruns v9.57; PsExec v1.97; and PsKill v1.13. Users already familiar with the Sysinternals utilities should not expect to see any major changes in the latest release of the suite. In fact, the updates are focused on minor tweaks and bug fixes.
“VMMap v2.5: This update to VMMap, a process memory analysis utility, now identifies thread environment blocks (TEBs), the process environment block (PEB), and reserved memory,” Metz said. “Disk2vhd v1.4: Now includes an option for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that directs it to fix up the kernel and HAL to make the VHDs generated for these systems bootable in Virtual PC. It also skips sectors with CRC errors to enable the conversion of systems with failing disks.”
Disk2vhd is one of tools only recently added to the Sysinternals suite, and designed to streamline the transfer of physical installations of Windows into guest platforms set up to run inside virtual machines. With the latest update customers will be able to migrate XP and Windows Server 2003 platforms from disk to Virtual PC as bootable VHDs. Of course, in this sense, Microsoft is playing catch-up to VMWare, which was already offering similar functionality.
“Sigcheck v1.63: Instead of reporting ‘unsigned image’ for all signature check failures, Sigcheck now reports specific errors, such as the root not being trusted and the signing chain not being valid. Autoruns v9.57: Now reports more group policy script entries. PsExec v1.97: This update to PsExec fixes the interactive (-i) switch for Windows XP and a bug in the copy-to-remote (-c) switch that would sometimes prevent the copy from succeeding. PsKill v1.13: Fixes a bug in the process tree termination logic,” Metz added.
The latest release of the Sysinternals Suite, including Disk2vhd 1.0, is available for download here.