Where Did All My Free Space Go?

It happens to everyone eventually. Your hard drive is suddenly full and you are left wondering where did all my free space go? Now you must begin the task of deleting old files and folders to reclaim space but where do you start? In the past I would suggest manually checking the sizes of all of your folders so you know where to begin the hunt but now there is a great utility called WinDirStat that does the work for you.  After inspecting a drive you are shown exactly how much data is in each folder, what file types are taking up the most space and even a visual representation of the files on your disk.

Now you know exactly where to target your cleanup effort.


WinDirStat Web site.
Free Download.

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What Is svchost.exe?

One of the most common questions about system processes is what is svchost.exe and why are there so many processes running? First appearing in Windows XP, svchost.exe hosts multiple services within one process.  This allows the operating system to save memory by reducing process overhead by cutting down on the number of processes that need to be running.

Every system service such as Windows Update, Event Log, Terminal Services, Audio Service, etc. runs within svchost.exe.  Depending on the access the services need, they are grouped together and are run in a number of processes which explains why you see so many in Task Manager running under different accounts such as System, Local Service and Network Service.

Identifying what services are running is different depending on the version of Windows you have.

Windows XP

In Windows XP at a command prompt run:

tasklist /svc

The tasklist utility will show you what processes are running under each svchost.exe process.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Task manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 has been enhanced so you can easily see what services are running inside a host process such as svchost.exe.

Click on the Start Button, type in taskmgr and hit Enter. When task manager loads, click on the Processes tab and click Show processes from all users to see all of the svchost.exe processes. Then, right click on a svchost.exe process and select Go to Service(s). You will be taken to the Services tab with all services running in that process highlighted.

All Versions of Windows

Microsoft Sysinternals has a great free utility called Process Explorer that is like a task manager on steroids.  It works on all versions of Windows and allows you to easily see services running inside of svchost.exe.  Download Process Explorer here.  Once you have it running right click on any process and select Properties. Then click on the Services tab and you will see all processes running inside the host process.

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Share Your Screen With SharedView

Microsoft SharedView is a free utility that allows you to share your desktop, applications and documents with up to 15 people online at a time. It is perfect to hold a small meeting or to show a family member how to do something. Best of all it works well through firewalls and routers so you don’t have to worry about connection issues.

Getting Microsoft SharedView up and running requires a Microsoft Live ID, broadband connection and a short download.

Click here to download SharedView

Once downloaded and installed just start up the utility from the start menu and sign in. Then click Start a new session and send your participants the link and details provided. Finally,click the Start button to start your meeting/event.

After the meeting has started you need to share something for your participants to view.  Click the Share button on the top of the screen and select the app you want to share.  You can also select your entire desktop on the bottom of the list.

Once selected click the Start button to begin sharing.


Read more on the Microsoft SharedView site

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Recover Deleted Photos, Pictures And Other Files

Have you ever accidentally deleted a photo or other file from your computer or digital camera?  Even if you clear the recycle bin, there is still a chance your pictures can be recovered.

Even though a file was deleted there is a good chance the contents of the file are still around.  When a file is deleted the contents of the file are not removed. Only a pointer to the file in the file system table is deleted. 

Time is your worst enemy when restoring files. When the pointer to the file has been deleted the operating system can use that storage space to write and store new data.  The longer it has been since you realized the file was deleted increases the chance any remaining file content has been overwritten.

It is very important to immediately stop writing to the storage device that previously contained your pictures so that the old file contents are not overwritten.  For example, don’t take any more pictures with your digital camera because new pictures will overwrite the deleted files.

Next, you will need to use a utility to reassemble the file remains back into the original files.

I like to use a free utility called Recuva by Piriform.  Head over to http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard to download a copy.

After the utility is installed start it up and click cancel on the Recuva Wizard screen.  I’m not a big fan of wizards, instead I’m going to show you the power user method.

First, select the drive you want to scan for the deleted files.

There are two ways to scan for deleted files. First we are going to use the default scan method by just clicking Scan.

The results pane will be populated when the scan is completed. Files that are  green can be recovered by other files that are yellow or red have been overwritten. Previews are shown for some files when you click on them.

Check the boxes next to the files you want to restore and click Recover.

Select a location to restore the files to and click OK. Make sure you select a different storage device/drive than where the files are currently located so you don’t overwrite the file remains.

Your files will now be recovered.

Deep Scan

Earlier I mentioned there is another method to recover deleted files with Recuva that is helpful when the files you want do restore were not found with the normal scan. 

Running a deep scan will check the actual sectors on the storage device for file remains. You can enable this scan option by clicking Options on the main screen.

Click on the Actions tab, check Deep Scan and click OK.

Now just click Scan again and go for a walk because the deep scan can take a while depending on the size of the drive.

When the scan is completed restore the files the same way discussed above for the normal scan.

Good Luck!

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Kill Processes From Command Prompt

I'm sure you are familiar with the traditional way to kill or end a process in Windows using Task Manager.  This method is effective but not nearly as fun as killing a process in Command Prompt.  Additionally, killing processes in Command Prompt provides much more control and the ability to end multiple processes at once.

All of this is possible with the TaskKill command. First, let's cover the basics.  You can kill a process by the process ID (PID) or by image name (EXE filename).

Open up an Administrative level Command Prompt and run tasklist to see all of the running processes:
C:\>tasklist

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ ============
firefox.exe                          26356 Console             139,352 K
regedit.exe                         24244 Console              9,768 K
cmd.exe                             18664 Console              2,380 K
conhost.exe                        2528 Console                7,852 K
notepad.exe                       17364 Console               7,892 K
notepad.exe                       24696 Console               22,028 K
notepad.exe                       25304 Console               5,852 K
explorer.exe                       2864 Console                 72,232 K

In the example above you can see the image name and the PID for each process. If you want to kill the firefox process run:
C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F

 or
C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F

The /f flag is kills the process forcefully.  Failure to use the /F flag will result in nothing happening in some cases.  One example is whenever I want to kill the explorer.exe process I have to use the /F flag or else the process just does not terminate.

If you have multiple instances of an image open such as multiple firefox.exe processes, running the taskkill /IM firefox.exe command will kill all instances. When you specify the PID only the specific instane of firefox will be terminated.

The real power of taskkill are the filtering options that allow you to use the following variables and operators.

Variables:

    STATUS
    IMAGENAME
    PID
    SESSION
    CPUTIME
    MEMUSAGE
    USERNAME
    MODULES
    SERVICES
    WINDOWTITLE

Operators:

    eq (equals)
    ne (not equal)
    gt (greater than)
    lt (less than)
    ge (greater than or equal)
    le (less than or equal)

"*" is the wildcard.

You can use the variables and operators with the /FI filtering flag.  For example, let's say you want to end all processes that have a window title that starts with "Internet":
C:\>taskkill /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq Internet*" /F

How about killing all processes running under the Steve account:
C:\>taskkill /FI "USERNAME eq Steve" /F

It is also possible to kill a process running on a remote computer with taskkill.  Just run the following to kill notepad.exe on a remote computer called SteveDesktop:
C:\>taskkill /S SteveDesktop /U RemoteAccountName /P RemoteAccountPassword /IM notepad.exe /F

To learn more about taskkill run it with the /? command just like any other Windows command.

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Convert Physical Machines To Virtual With Disk2vhd

The Windows Sysinternals group at Microsoft has released Disk2vhd that is a free physical to virtual converter. Disk2vhd allows you to create VHD (virtual hard dive) files from physical drives on your computer while your system is online. The VHD files generated can be used in Microsoft Virtual PC or on Hyper-V server and you will have an instant clone of your machine running virtually.  This is perfect for duplicating a production server for a development virtual machine that you can use on a different computer.

Below is a Microsoft screenshot of a copy of Window Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V system running in a virtual machine on top of the system it was created from.

To get started download the utility from Microsoft by clicking here.

After you have it downloaded, extract the zip file and run disk2vhd.exe.

Now just specify the VHD file name and location and check the drives you want to convert to a VHD.  Each physical partition will be saved in a separate VHD file.

Click Create and the process will begin. On my computer it took about 45 minutes to copy the drive into a VHD file because of a large amount of data.

Once completed copy the VHD files to any computer with Microsoft Virtual PC, Hyper-V or any virtualization app that supports VHD files. Then just setup a new virtual machine to point to the existing VHD files.

Read More at Sysinternals

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Close All Open Applications With One Click

At the end of the day I always like to close the open applications to prepare my computer for the next day. Since I rarely reboot my desktop, I manually close each application. Depending on the number of open applications this can be a waste of time.   The people at NTWind Software have a perfect utility for this situation aptly called Close All Windows. Instead of manually closing each application just click the Close All Windows button on your taskbar.

In this article I will show you how to install and configure Close All Windows on your computer for easy access on the taskbar.

To get started head over to NTWind Software and download the latest version of Close All Windows.

After the file is downloaded extract the CloseAll folder to a permanent location on your computer.  Since Close All Windows is an application I extracted the folder to C:\Program Files\ where applications are typically installed.



For easy access it is best to pin the application to the taskbar. Drag the Close All Windows application from the CloseAll folder onto the taskbar.



Congratulations, you are now more efficient.

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Batch File Rename With Windows PowerShell

Microsoft included a batch rename feature in the latest version of Windows allowing you to select multiple files, right click on one and select rename. All of the selected files will be renamed with the name you provided and a number. This functionality works well for basic files but does not provide any flexibility in exactly how the files are numbered and also does not allow the file extension to be changed.

Windows PowerShell, which is included in Windows starting with Vista and 2008 Server and available for XP, provides the raw tools to allow you to perform batch file renames. The trick is to pipe the output of one command into another command allowing you to connect the functionality to produce a useful outcome.

The two PowerShell commands needed for batch file renaming are dir (which is an alias for get-childitem) and rename-item.

To get started I suggest copying all the files you need to rename to a separate directory.  Then, open up Windows PowerShell and navigate to the directory with the CD command.

Depending on how you want to rename the files there are a few different techniques:

Changing the File Extension of all .jpeg files to .jpg

Dir *.jpeg | rename-item -newname {  $_.name  -replace ".jpeg",".jpg"  }

In the above example the $_ represents each item passed to the rename-item command via the pipe | from the dir command.

Appending a File Extension

Dir | rename-item -newname  { $_.Name +".jpg" }

File Rename with Customizable Increasing Number

Dir *.jpg | ForEach-Object  -begin { $count=1 }  -process { rename-item $_ -NewName "image$count.jpg"; $count++ }

In the example we needed to use an additional command known as foreach-object that allows you to set a variable (our counter) before looping through each file in the directory and then do an action for each item. The result of the above example are files named image1.jpg, image2.jpg and so on.

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