Since Microsoft bought Winternals, they took away the Admin Pak and NTFSDOS Pro from the general public.

I was wondering what people are using now as replacements for these products?

What exactly are you trying to do? I wouldn't recommend messing with NTFSDOS anymore. You could get to a command prompt by booting to a Windows Vista DVD, or by using Windows PE, which is available in the Automated Installation Kit.

ERD Commander is now in the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset.

And how, pray tell, is a member of the general public supposed to purchase the "Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset?" It's only available to corporate customers. And then, in order for corporate customers to get it, they have to subscribe to and be a member of the "Software Assurance Program." A freelance tech for example no longer has the ability to go and do a simple purchase. If they want the last version before Microsoft took over (ERD Commander 2005), their only option is to look for a warez source.

"What exactly are you trying to do?"

I'm getting really sick of this sentiment. Anytime someone asks about a program or a product or a piece of hardware, someone always has to ask, "What's it for specifically?"

I don't have anything specific I'm trying to do! ERD Commander gives the user abilities to do lots of things, such as backing up the registry hives directly and not using some ridiculous program that does it by writing in a proprietary format or just uses System Restore. It has emergency utilities and recovery tools. It's something I'd just like to have!

So, now that the only way to get the "Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset" is to work for some big company that is a member of the "Software Assurance Program," I thought that there must be something that freelance techs such as myself have moved on to?

I'm really only interested in hearing from people who can answer that. Please don't reply if all you're going to say is "what are you trying to do" or "why do you want this" or "buy a corporate license then buy a software assurance license" etc.

I'm what I guess you could call a "free lance tech," I was lucky enough to buy my license to ERD Commander while it was still available. However, I really only use it for very simple things. For example I use it to make a backup of the registry (default, sam, security, software, system, ntuser.dat) to a directory, then if one of the files gets screwed due to my tinkering I can just move it back.

I usually tell anyone who asks for where they can get it to look to Usenet or torrent sites. It really sucks that I have to resort to that but that really is the only way people can get it now. Microsoft can only blame themselves for this.

ERD Commander is mainly a system recovery tool, and if you want something that is in my opinion better (and free), look to ultimatebootcd.com. For NTFS access in DOS, it has Avira NTFS4DOS Personal which allows copying and deleting.

Oh, excuse me. I was wondering what task you were trying to accomplish in case I knew of any good alternative. I didn't realize that you were just here on a rant.

I agree it sucks that Microsoft doesn't sell ERD Commander to individuals. In fact, when they bought Winternals, they should have made it available for free. I know the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset link that I posted is a 30 day evaluation, but does it have any hard timeout set in it? In my quick test with changing the clock on Virtual PC, I didn't see one. I really don't use ERD as much as I used to, but then again, I don't do much work on peoples' personal computers anymore either. I grew sick of it.

I think Microsoft's idea is that you shouldn't need a separate utility like ERD. Starting with Vista, the Windows installation disk should (big emphasis on "should") provide you with the means of fixing a non-booting Windows installation. Now I know that's not always the case with the tools that Microsoft provides, but since Vista's installation disk is based on Windows PE, you are able to boot it up, get to a command prompt, access files on the computer, access a USB drive, and run various utilities, even ones not provided by Microsoft. Which, by the way, you can even configure a USB drive to boot to Windows PE or the Windows Vista installation. I always carry a WinPE-bootable USB drive with me on my keychain. Two, in fact!

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2008 For Software Assurance, Includes ERD Commander


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...se/default.mspx





Works for Win Vista/Server2008
Run launcher.hta in launcher folder