If you install WinDbg (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx), you also get a handful of additional command line tools which aren’t necessarily very visible. Some of them are just console versions of the kernel debugger (such as i386kd.exe) and others are for helping you manage a symbol server, but there are a few useful utilities in there that are worth some advertisement to the uninitiated.

tlist.exe

This tool will display all the processes which are currently running and can also give you some useful information about them. For example, the “-c” switch will display the arguments passed into an application and will also often show the full path to the location of the executable. And if you ever need to know exactly which DLLs a program is actually using (as your system will often have multiple copies floating around), tlist can tell you that as well.

kill.exe

One of the other frequently used tools is kill.exe. No more Mr. Nice Guy, this little app will abruptly terminate any application. For the times that a hung program just won’t go away, no matter how much prodding you give it from the UI, “kill.exe -f” is often the quickest solution.

agestore.exe

This little utility lets you easily delete files based off of the last time a file was accessed. This is great for cleaning out old test reports, build logs, or even symbol files (which is why this tool comes with WinDbg).

dumpchk.exe

This application will take a crash dump file and spew out a plethora of information about the crash. This is handy when you want to see some information about a crash dump without having to go all the way into a debugger. This is also a great tool for creating standardized crash logs which you can attach to bug reports.