Windows Utilities for a Tester or Anyone

TASKMANAGER

I have seen many people pressing “CTRL+ALT+DEL” button whenever they want to end any process or a program because of numerous reasons. A program might not be responding or a program might be hung. But most of the people don’t explore the features of Task Manager. They just use it because most of the people use it in ending the program.  If you see clearly the Task Manager you might find different Tabs like “Applications”, “Processes”, “Performance”, “Networking”, “Users”. These all the tabs give a lot information for a tester to help him/her in a testing activity. To explore more about Task Manager you need to use it & I hope it doesn’t take you much time to just press “CTRL+ALT+DEL” in your system and explore the features of TASK MANAGER.

The different ways in which you can invoke task manager are,
1.    You can click on “Start” -> “Run” -> Type “taskmgr” and hit enter or click on “OK” button.
2.    Just press CTRL+ALT+DEL button simultaneously.
3.    Right-click on the task bar and click on “Task Manager”

The advanced tool which has more features than Task Manager is Process Explorer. Just type “Download Process Explorer” in Google Search & the first search result is your way to go.

PERFORMANCE

You might have used various tools for testing Performance of your system. Have you tried a handy tool that is provided with your Windows Operating System? No right. Assuming that you haven’t tried it let me guide you to the built in tool. There is a tool in Windows Operating System that monitors the performance of your system. This tool is especially provided for the administrator. Only a user with administrative privileges on his/her system can use this tool. The tool name is “Performance”.

To invoke the program and start using it,
1.    Click on “Start” -> “Run” -> Type “perfmon.msc”.
2.    Go to “Control Panel” and click on “Administrative Tools” & then click on “perfmon.msc”.

You will be amazed to see this tool which will be of not great help but little help to you for a quick start. “Performance” tool will help you to understand the working of pages in Operating System. The more you study about the “Performance” tool, the more you understand about the working of your system.

Dr Watson

Dr Watson is another built in tool in Windows Operating System. It is a troubleshooting utility that helps a user in fixing the error or an issue with his/her system.

To open Dr. Watson, click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type drwtsn32.

Dr. Watson cannot prevent errors from occurring, but the information recorded in the log file can be used by technical support personnel to diagnose the problem.

The above Notes have been collected from Help & Support of Windows. Now you must be understood about Dr Watson. Use this & you will find how to handle the errors and how you can use the error logs to debug the problem or fix a problem in your system.
Reference: Help & Support of Windows Operating System.

Event Viewer

Event viewer is a program that comes with Windows Operating System which is used to maintain the log files, event data or your system data. You can gather the information about your hardware from the Event Viewer.

To know about it more click on “Start” -> “Run” -> Type “eventvwr.msc”.

Note that I’m just giving you the brief information and not the complete detailed information because I want you to explore more about the tool rather than just following my document and keeping yourself confined to these points.

Remote Desktop Connection

What if a tester, want to test an application on a different Operating System like Linux, Solaris, Macintosh etcetera. A tester might find it difficult because he/she might not have the resource currently. So this is where Remote Desktop Connection comes to help of a tester. You can just connect to a machine which might have different configuration and test it. There are many third party remote desktop connection with free license as well as commercial license out there in the market but why shouldn’t one use which is built-in program of Windows Operating System. To start using Remote Desktop Connection you just need to click on “Start” -> “Run” -> Type “mstsc”.
Similar Programs

LogMeIn

TeamViewer – Desktop Sharing Program.

ProCaster – This is the one which is developed by LiveStream which was formerly known as Mogulus. (This is similar to Webinar kind but still can be useful for a tester to demonstrate it to someone while he/she wants to reproduce the bug and show it to the developer from a remote location).

Thank you for reading this document. I request you also to produce documents which can help the community of Software Testing Professionals.