Forget tennis. Don't bother me with golf. I spend my spare time troubleshooting Windows problems. You laugh, sure, but when you need a special tool for some obscure Windows glitch, you'll be grateful for the late nights I spend at Steve Bass's PC Testing Laboratory and Grill.

Fresh out of the Bass Test Center are six utilities that allow you to shine a light into Windows and see exactly what it's doing. Some of these beauties are strictly diagnostic; others are designed to let you make changes to your system safely.

Filemon and Regmon: You install a new program only to find that every time you launch it, some other program freezes. Regmon can help. This crafty freeware from Sysinternals monitors the activity in your Registry (the place where Windows manages your apps and itself, and the source of many system problems) in real time to reveal what the new program is doing. Click any line in Regmon's log to pop open Windows' Registry Editor and view specific Registry changes. You can filter out nonrelevant Registry activity or capture and save all Registry logs (ideal reading for insomniacs).

Sysinternals' free Filemon utility keeps a log of all the processes that have run on your system. This log can be a real time-saver when you're trying to figure out which programs are the source of your machine's problems. Filemon is also a terrific way to find MPEG and AVI files that are temporarily stored on your system when you view a streaming video.

Registry Drill: How's your Registry doing? Mine is squeaky-clean: no out-of-date entries, missing file pointers, damaged keys, or caraway seeds from yesterday's lunch. The reason is Easy Desk Software's $40 Registry Drill, which scrupulously analyzes my Registry. Registry Drill finds errors other programs miss, and its explanations help me troubleshoot. The program works with all versions of Windows and comes with a ten-day trial.

Bugtoaster: Getting an accurate reading on a system problem is sometimes crazy-making. My most recent headache: The e-mail program I use, Qualcomm's Eudora, often crashed when I opened a message with embedded images. I tracked down the problem using Bugtoaster, a free monitoring tool that accurately diagnosed the snafu as Eudora's incorrect (and dumb) handling of a basic Windows function. Bugtoaster may not fix anything, but at least it let me report the bug. Visit Bugtoaster's site to see if your problem--and its solution--are already in the site's extensive crash database.

X-Setup: I've tried dozens of Windows-tweaking programs, but none of them comes close to providing the peephole that Xteq Systems' X-Setup gives me into hundreds of my PC's hidden settings. The free program's insight lets me stop my CD drive from automatically playing music CDs, hide all drives in Windows Explorer, and restrict the ability to delete printers, among other functions. X-Setup includes more than 300 options--some user-written plug-ins, and some unique tweaks, such as those for disabling portions of Internet Explorer's toolbar and fiddling with NVidia and 3dfx Voodoo graphics hardware settings. The new X-Setup 6.2 works with all versions of Windows.

CommView: There's a sneaky new breed of program that phones home regularly, sending missives about your PC habits to its servers without your knowledge. TamoSoft's $99 CommView watches every bit of Internet activity on your system--incoming and outgoing (a firewall usually alerts you only to the activity, not the content). The tool shows you which programs are sending things back to their servers, what they're sending, and the port that's being used. Believe me, you'll be astonished--and glad you paid the utility's relatively high price.

SUMMARY

TamoSoft: CommView 3.3 $99

SUMMARY

Easy Desk Software: Registry Drill $40

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