The right tool for the job

Having the right tools for the job can save your day. Over the years I have been using a number of tools when trouble shooting problems. Here my shopping list of (mostly free) tools that I use in my day to day work.

If you have a favourite must have tool for trouble shooting which is not on the list then please let me know!

Performance

• Xperf
• ProcessExplorer: Taks manager on steroids
• ProcMon: SysInternals tool for monitoring file, registry and network events
• PerformanceMonitor: including PAL
• PerfMonitor: .NET/CLR profiling
• RML: SQL performance problems
• AQ Time (commercial): profiling C# code
• V-Tune (commercial)

Debugging

• Debugging tools for Windows (AKA WinDbg), including sos, sosex, pscor2
• DebugDiag
• ApplicationVerifier: finding all kinds of nasty problems in unmanaged code
• .NET Memory Profiler (commercial)
• VMMap: debugging memory problems
• Wireshark

General Purpose Tools

• PowerShell / PowerGUI
• Agent Ransack: file search utility
• Everything: file search
• WinMerge
• Notepad++
• NDepend (commercial)