Tool Time: 175 Free Tools for the Taking

13 Scripting Freebies
No matter whether you write scripts or not, you'll likely find many of the 13 recommendations in "Script Writers' Favorite Free Utilities" helpful:

1. Blat. A command-line utility that uses SMTP to send email or uses Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) to post to Usenet.
2. AutoIt v3 and SciTE Is a scripting language (AutoIt) and editor (SciTE).
3. CodeKeep Add-In. Is a code snippet manager for Visual Studio (VS).
4. DumpSec. Is a Windows security auditing program.
5. Joeware website. Offers many command-line utilities to automate AD tasks (e.g., AdQueueLoop, Unlock) and other tasks (e.g., DNSSrvRec, SidToName).
6. MD5WIN. Computes and compares Message-Digest algorithm 5 (MD5) digest strings.
7. NirSoft website. Offers numerous utilities for monitoring networks, managing passwords, retrieving Internet-related data, and performing other system-management tasks.
8. Notepad++. Is a text and code editor.
9. PSPad. Is a text and code editor.
10. Python. Is a programming/scripting language that you can use to automate tasks.
11. Regular Expression Laboratory. Lets you create regular expressions and test them against arbitrary text.
12. VIM. Is a text and code editor.
13. WinZip Command Line Support Add-On. Lets you use WinZip directly from the command line and from scripts.

7 Freebies for SharePoint
Freebies that might be of interest to SharePoint administrators include the following:

"SharePoint Freebies Someone You Might Know Might Want"

1. Document Connection for Mac. Aids in accessing and browsing Mac documents in SharePoint.
2. Free Technology for Microsoft SharePoint User Groups. Is a program to provide free add-ons and other products to community-organized SharePoint user groups.
3. Persian Language Pack for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0.

"More SharePoint Freebies Someone You Might Know Might Want"

4. Discovery Wizard for SharePoint. Gathers SharePoint inventory data and displays it in HTML reports.
5. DocAve SQL Restore Controller. Provides item-level, site-level, and site collection-level restores from active SQL Server databases and from SQL Server backups.
6. Idera SharePoint performance monitor. Monitors SharePoint performance counters and sends email alerts when problems arise.

"Free SharePoint Archiving Tool Aims to Cut Bloat"

7. Metalogix Archiving Express for SharePoint. Archives SharePoint content.

12 Freebies for Exchange
Some helpful freebies when working with Microsoft Exchange include:

"Top 10 Exchange Server 2007 Troubleshooting Tools"

1. Database Recovery Management Tool. Analyzes a database store and specifies the steps needed to mount it.
2. Database Troubleshooter. Analyzes database and transaction logs and their entries and reports on problems that might prevent you from recovering the database.
3. Dcdiag. Analyzes the state of domain controllers in a forest or enterprise and reports any problems.
4. Event Viewer. Lets you view Exchange-related events.
5. Mail Flow Troubleshooter. Identifies and repairs mail flow holdups.
6. Message Tracking. Reveals a message’s path through the Exchange Server organization when messages get lost in mail flow transit.
7. Nslookup. Helps troubleshoot DNS problems.
8. Performance Monitor. Analyzes counters associated with various aspects of system performance to see whether those counters fall within a designated range.
9. Performance Troubleshooter. Analyzes three RPC performance problems.
10. Queue Viewer. Lets you view and interact with mail flow queues.

"Two Exchange Server Tools You Should Know About"

11. Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL). Analyzes a performance monitor counter log analyzes and puts its findings in an HTML report.
12. 'Rough and Tough' Guide to Identifying Patterns in Transaction Logs. Provides a set of tools and associated processes for figuring out what's happening on an Exchange server given a set of transaction log files.

80 Freebies for SQL Server
If your IT duties include working with SQL Server, check out "The Mega Guide to Free SQL Server Tools". This guide includes 80 tools, so the list is too long to print here. You can find out what those tools are at http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/102244/102244.html.