WinTK: Windows Multi Tool Manager for System Administrators

WinTK is multi purpose utility with some cool features for Windows 8, Windows 7 & Windows Vista. There are a couple of features in this tool that are really helpful – like the one for decrypting the Digital Product ID for Windows operating system and Office products. Also, the ability to backup and modify OEM information is quite useful too. I know there are already a couple of tools that do it, but still it’s nice to have one more addition to our USB toolkit for IT Professionals. The thing that mostly attracted me is the user interface – it’s really clean and beautiful.

WinTK for System Administrators

Here is the list of features that WinTK offers:

• View Office and Windows product keys
• Edit, backup and restore OEM information
• View operating system information
• View your Slic version
• Includes various system tools and custom tools
• View Resource Usage
• Delete stuck or in use files
• Disable unnecessary services
• Automatically check for updates

Now lets see how it works. First we’ll see how it pulls the licensing information for the Windows operating system & Office. When you open the tool, make sure you right-click and run the application as administrator. In order to decrypt the Digital Product ID, we need to manually enter the registry location, which I think could have been avoided since less tech-savvy people may not know the location. For those who don’t know the location, I’ll list the registry locations here:

For Windows OS: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

For Office: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Registration

I have Office 2013 so it’s 15.0, but it changes according to which version of Office you are using.

• So copy the key and paste in Digital Product ID window.

• Now you can click on Decrypt and view the Product details with Product Key

You can copy it to the clipboard or just export it and save it for later use. I couldn’t test the Office part since Office 2013 is not supported by the tool yet.

The other feature is the OEM Editor.

You have the ability to backup and restore the current OEM information. You can also change the OEM details. It’s fairly simple to use. Then other options are Toolbox where you’ll find links to several Windows administrative tools like Group Policy Editor, MSCONFIG etc. One useful feature in the bunch is “Delete Stuck File”

Once you browse and select the file you have the option to back up the file and then delete it. Under Services +, it gives you a glance of a few important services and the status and ability to start and stop the service. You also have a tool tip for the given services. This will tell you what exactly that service does.

Incase this tool crashes with a message: WinTK has stopped responding, then according to the developer you need to run a command.

• Open the command prompt as administrator
• Type in lodctr –r
• Once this is done reboot the system and test it again.

To conclude it’s a great little tool with some rather useful options. But I have to say that it’s meant more for IT Professionals, rather than an average user because of the way it’s designed. There is a lot of room for improvement. You can download it from here from Softpedia.