What do you have in your c:\tools folder?

mrsilver · Apr 18, 2024

A while ago I saw someone espousing the virtues of c:\tools.

This is a folder on your computer (and in your PATH) that contains all those handy (usually self-contained) executables that you either run as a windowed program or from the command line.

Mine contains: 7za, autoruns, convert, exiftool, fat32formatter, ffmpeg, ffplay, ffprobe, identify, magick, montage, rufus, sqlite3 and validrive.

What useful tools do you have in yours?

Paladin · Apr 18, 2024

I have some of the same plus Stacher (youtube downloader), WinISO, AeroAdmin, MIB Browser, NetScanner64, TFTPD64, PowerSNMP, httrack, cdp4win, winmd5, DoubleKiller and DupeGuru, guiformat, hashcalc, YUMI multiboot tool, DTC Bandwidth Calc, b64dec, and an epub to pdf converter.

Ardax · Apr 22, 2024

A whole lot less than I used to. A lot of my stuff got migrated to Store installs (which have their own ways of putting things on the PATH) or pulled out of the path to minimize possible misuse.

Actually left on my path are a couple of ancient command prompt scripts I wrote, implementations of crc32sum/md5sum/sha1sum, dupemerge and ln, mutool, and Explorer++.

Entegy · Apr 23, 2024

The only thing I ever add is Sysinternals Suite. I love that it's on the Store now for easy updating, but it's slightly trickier to get the folder path on the Store version to add to my PATH.

LordDaMan · Apr 23, 2024

Entegy said:
The only thing I ever add is Sysinternals Suite. I love that it's on the Store now for easy updating, but it's slightly trickier to get the folder path on the Store version to add to my PATH.

You could just map "https://live.sysinternals.com/ " to a drive and then use terminal to access it. That way it's always easily accessed and it's always up to date.

Ardax · Apr 23, 2024

Entegy said:
The only thing I ever add is Sysinternals Suite. I love that it's on the Store now for easy updating, but it's slightly trickier to get the folder path on the Store version to add to my PATH.

If you install from the Store, then the executables should already be available on the PATH, unless you've knackered things up somehow. (Or they're all not on the PATH and my memory sucks.)

Open your Settings app (as in, the main Windows Settings App) and search for "App execution aliases". All the Sysinternals tools show up there for me after installing from the Store.

Whittey · Apr 24, 2024

GNU coretools, sysinternals suite, diskspd, vdbench, and iperf. My tools directory is on my personal drive though. While it doesn't end up in my path, it is available on every machine I'm ever using, which is nice.

Oh, and a cmd script to runas various admin accounts that also maps a drive to my tools in that new context.

Jeff S · May 5, 2024

How is the tools dir different functionally different from the Program Files dir? It sounds like the main difference is that you are dropping a bunch of different .exe/.com/.jar/.py/etc files in a single directory, without having per-vendor sub-dirs, and then add that one dir to the path? So this is acting sort of like a /usr/local/bin dir under a posix-y OS?

Ardax · May 5, 2024

Jeff S said:
So this is acting sort of like a /usr/local/bin dir under a posix-y OS?

That's kind of exactly the point, yeah. The stuff you throw on the PATH or in a folder on a USB stick so it's available any time any where.

LordDaMan · May 5, 2024

Jeff S said:
How is the tools dir different functionally different from the Program Files dir?

Program Files is typically not in your PATH and it's write protected and it's under higher user rights requiring you to escalate privileges if you want to add or remove things from there.

Jeff S said:
It sounds like the main difference is that you are dropping a bunch of different .exe/.com/.jar/.py/etc files in a single directory, without having per-vendor sub-dirs, and then add that one dir to the path? So this is acting sort of like a /usr/local/bin dir under a posix-y OS?

Pretty much yeah. Add "Tools" to the PATH and you can access it from any command prompt.

hal_incandenza · May 6, 2024

All of the above, and also not having a space in the path which drives me nuts about Program Files

LordDaMan · May 6, 2024

PATH only applies to the specific directory added, not child directories. So even if you added program files, it wouldn't really do anything.

Also "program files" is mapped to the system variable %programfiles%, so if you really needed it in the command line you can access it.

Ardax · May 6, 2024

I remember back in the Windows 9x days remapping Program Files in the registry to be Programs. You could also remap Program Files\Common Files.

I did all that and more to get rid of directories with spaces in the names.

LordDaMan · May 6, 2024

May as well throw this out, as it's pretty useful for this thread:

Type cmd in an explorer window in the address bar and a command prompt will open up to whatever folder you are in explorer.

On the other side, start. (that's start with a period right after it, no spaces) will open explorer at whatever directory you are in at the command prompt

Ardax · May 6, 2024

LordDaMan said:
Type cmd in an explorer window in the address bar and a command prompt will open up to whatever folder you are in explorer.

Pretty much any command on the PATH will work.

LordDaMan said:
start. (that's start with a period right after it, no spaces)

Note that inserting a space will work for Command Prompts, and is required for PowerShell windows.

What do you have in your c:\tools folder?

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