If you're a long-time Windows user and you're something of an IT expert, then you're likely familiar with SysInternals. It's a set of tools developed by Mark Russinovich — initially before he joined Microsoft — and it provides some functionality that end users weren't always meant to have, making it possible to view advanced information or test specific scenarios. The tools were so popular that Microsoft acquired Russinovich's company and continued developing the suite well into the modern age.

While some SysInternals tools have lost their purpose on modern versions of Windows (such as Windows 11), many others are still getting updates and are useful to this very day. So, if you haven't yet, here are a few Sysinternals tools that belong on your Windows PC.

Autoruns

Keep an eye on your running programs

Have you ever wondered how many programs start running automatically on your system? From programs running at boot or logon, to shell extensions and scheduled tasks, there's a lot to take into account that you may not know about. And while there are ways to check this information across different parts of Windows, there's no single easy way to view it all in one place. That's where AutoRuns comes into play.

This tool shows you everything that's set to run automatically within your system. Logon tasks, scheduled tasks, shell extensions, DLLs, and a whole lot more are visible in this singular interface, and you can turn any items on or off at your discretion. It becomes much easier to manage these tasks this way, and you can reduce resource usage and potentially improve your PC's performance by turning some of these off. This may even help you detect some malware or unwanted software altogether, so it's a good first step towards a cleaner PC.

Process Explorer

Task Manager who?

The Task Manager in Windows 11 is a useful tool for seeing your running tasks, terminating programs that might be unresponsive, or changing the priority of different processes to improve overall performance. It can also be used to monitor resource usage on your PC, since you can see how much of your CPU, GPU, RAM, disk, or network is being used in real time.

Process Explorer, however, takes all of that to the next level. This program offers a much more structured and detailed view of everything running on your computer, with just about every major feature handy. You can easily see process trees right away, set priority for different processes, and even set affinity for a given process, meaning you can make that specific process prefer to run on a specific core or set of cores on your CPU. You can also view resource usage for all different components of your PC, with even more detailed information than Task Manager offers.

All of this is offered in a more glanceable way so you don't have to spend as much time trying to find your way around the software. It's a truly fantastic tool.

Process Monitor

Keep an eye on file operations

While the name may sound similar, Process Monitor is a completely different tool from Process Explorer. This tool lets you visualize any file system operation that has happened on your system. Essentially, any time a process tries to access a file or a registry key, that event is logged and you can see it all laid out here.

With various filtering options available, Process Monitor allows you to keep a close eye on anything that may seem suspicious. If any of your files is being accessed by a process that shouldn't be using it, or if you're running into errors with file operations, Process Monitor can help you identify the problem.

It's definitely a tool for more advanced users, but Process Monitor is still incredibly helpful if you have a Windows PC.

SDelete

Delete files forever

You probably know about software that can fully clean your drive to make sure your files can't be recovered by someone else. Normally, this is done after a typical formatting of the drive, which means deleting all your data, and that's not alwys ideal. What if you just have a handful of files you want to delete without a trace?

SDelete does just that. When you delete a file from your computer using SDelete, the data is overwritten with empty space, ensuring that the file can't be recovered by dedicated software such as Recuva. If you deal with sensitive files, this can be immensely important.

Unlike the others, SDelete is a command-line tool, so you don't just launch it from double-clicking the executable. Instead, inside the folder where the SDelete executable is, just right-click empty space and choose Open Terminal here.

In the terminal, you can run this command, replacing C:\Path\to\target with the appropriate file or folder to delete:

sdelete64.exe -p 1 C:\Path\to\target

This will delete the target you indicated with a single pass to overwrite the deleted data. You can use the -p argument followed by any number to increase the number of overwrite passes, which reduces the chances of recovering the deleted file.

ZoomIt

Take a closer look. No, really

Finally, we have ZoomIt, a tool so useful that Microsoft has actually incorporated it into the PowerToys suite, too. ZoomIt is a presentation tool that lets you zoom in and highlight parts of the screen with a pointer. You can toggle zoom with a simple shortcut and use the mouse to move around, then simply left-click to start drawing.

You can use various keyboard shortcuts to change the color of the pen or switch to a highlighter, you can just copy or save a screenshot of the zoomed in area to edit or share as a file. It even includes a screen recording tool so you can create a video presentation even more easily without relying on multiple tools. Its apparent simplicity shouldn't hide the fact that it's great for making presentations or tutorials much easier to create once you get the hang of it. It's really worth checking out for almost anyone.

SysInternals is still fantastic

Despite being over two decades old, SysInternals is still an incredibly useful set of tools. These are just some personal highlights, but there are a ton more tools available on the SysInternals documentation page, so I recommend taking a look to see if anything else catches your eye. But the above solutions are a great starting point to see the potential.