What's in the bag

The Toolbox

A living reference for every tool I actually use. Yes, I do maintain this.

Purpose

I built this page as a reference for all the tools in my desktop toolkit - the ones I reach for both at home and at the office. Its primary job is to give me a reliable starting point when rebuilding a system from bare metal, so I'm not doing the mental archaeology of trying to remember what I installed and why.

Visitors are welcome to adopt anything here. That said, I'd encourage you to adapt it for your own situation rather than copying it wholesale - otherwise you might end up with a new machine that has my name, my preferences, and my very specific opinions about terminal color schemes all over it. 🤯

Feel free to link to toolbox.chrisbmn.com. This page is a living document and gets updated as my toolkit evolves.

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The Toolbox Folder

I keep a dedicated folder synced across all my machines via OneDrive, and I add it to my system PATH. Every portable utility goes in here, which means any tool is available from any terminal window on any of my computers - instantly, no installer required.

C:\Users\<UserName>\<OneDrive-Folder>\toolbox\

For the how-to on adding a path to your environment variables, this SuperUser article covers it nicely.

The Bread and Butter

The tools I'd notice missing within about 90 seconds of sitting down at a new machine.

  • Multiple tabs, multiple shells (Command Prompt, PowerShell, Azure Cloud Shell), full Unicode support, and enough theming options to satisfy even my particular taste. I have a setup guide here if you want to see how I've got mine configured.

  • The Swiss Army knife of Windows troubleshooting. AccessEnum, ADExplorer, Autologon, BgInfo, Process Explorer, Process Monitor, PsExec… why stop at just a few? Download the whole kit.

  • Microsoft's official collection of power-user utilities - window management, keyboard remapping, color picker, file renaming at scale, and a bunch of other tricks Windows probably should have shipped with in the first place.

  • My go-to editor for any script, config file, or code hack I need to put together. I still keep Notepad++ and Notepads around for quick edits, and I'm keeping an eye on Zed - but VS Code hasn't given me a reason to leave yet. See my full VS Code setup guide here.

  • A fast, minimal, multi-tab Notepad replacement that works the way Windows Notepad should - but doesn't. If you're still using the built-in Notepad on Windows 11, I'm sorry. You deserve better.

  • I generate internal certs from our internal CA constantly. Converting .pfx to .cer, .crt, .pem, extracting keys - OpenSSL handles all of it without complaint. I genuinely don't know where I'd be without it. Oh my!

  • I remote into a lot of servers. A lot. RDM is where I store and manage every connection, and I've tried plenty of alternatives. Yes, it's a bit bloated. Yes, it can be complex. I keep coming back anyway. Use bare Windows RDP? Blaaah.

The Browsers

Yes, I use multiple. No, I'm not ashamed.

  • Brave Daily Driver

    My new daily driver and honestly - my new best friend. Chromium-based so everything just works, but without the Google surveillance apparatus baked in. Built-in ad and tracker blocking, fingerprinting protection, and none of the Chrome bloat I'd been tolerating for years. The only thing I dislike about Brave is the crypto/BAT features. It's a bit annoying, so I disabled all the wallet/rewards stuff immediately - see how I set it up if you want to do the same without clicking through every menu.

  • Former daily driver. Still installed for the rare site that needs it, but it's been benched. The surveillance concerns finally won the argument.

  • My dedicated Microsoft browser. Azure, Intune, Entra - anything in the Microsoft cloud just works better when you're already living in Edge. It earns its spot.

  • My go-to at work. Solid, reliable, respects your privacy more than the alternatives. The browser the internet deserves.

Notables I'm Tinkering With…

These are on my radar - some installed, some just watched from a safe distance.

Arc DuckDuckGo Epic Floorp Opera Thorium Vivaldi Zen

Essential Web Tools

Bookmarked, relied upon, and genuinely useful.

  • I got tired of googling the same tools over and over, only to land on some ad-infested site that wanted my email address before showing me a subnet calculator. So I built my own. IP lookups, DNS checks, WHOIS, password generator, subnet calc, and more - clean, fast, and exactly where I know to find them. (Laziness is just efficiency with better branding.)

  • Just give me all the ISP/IP details. Dead simple, weirdly satisfying. Try the fun mode when you're bored.

  • The official OG. Clean, authoritative WHOIS data, no noise.

  • When ICANN isn't enough and you need a deeper WHOIS dive.

  • Pretty much every DNS diagnostic tool you could want, in one place.

  • Hash generators, UUID tools, Base64 encoders, date converters, and about 80 other things you didn't know you needed until you needed them.

  • Instant analysis of your web server's HTTP security headers. Humbling and useful in equal measure.

  • Need an emoji? This is the source. 📖

  • Simple, clear DNS record analysis. Good for a sanity check after any DNS change.

Other Useful Tools

  • The unzipper that should just ship with Windows by default. Handles everything, costs nothing. No argument needed.

  • Upload, download, and manage Azure blobs, files, queues, and tables. Essential when you're working with Azure Storage regularly - and a lot more pleasant than doing it through the Portal.

  • I've used Paint.NET forever for icons, logos, and quick image edits. Not as deep as GIMP and decidedly not Photoshop - but it's free, fast, and has tons of plugins. Perfect for 90% of what I actually need.

  • The veteran. Free, fast, handles dozens of languages, and still the first thing I reach for when I just need to open a file and look at it.

  • The integrated environment for managing any SQL Server infrastructure. If you're working with SQL Server, this is the tool. There's no real substitute.

Less Often Used, But Still Here

Kept for the strange off-chance that the day comes when I need them. It always does eventually.

  • FileZilla - Reliable FTP/SFTP client. How this website gets updated.
  • WinDbg - For analyzing crash dumps and debugging kernel-mode code. Not a Tuesday afternoon tool.
  • WinMerge - Visual diff and merge tool. Indispensable when you need to compare two files side by side.
  • WinSCP - SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, SCP, and S3 in one client. Does more than FileZilla and keeps a lower profile about it.
  • WizTree / TreeSize / WinDirStat - Pick your preferred flavor of "why is my drive full?" All three are great; all three will tell you things you didn't want to know.

More IT Admin Tools

The toolbox folder extras - kept close just in case. They don't see daily use, but when they're needed, nothing else will do.

IIS Crypto LGPO LockHunter MobaXterm Nmap PortQryUI PuTTY Rufus RVTools SuperPuTTY Wireshark

AI Tools

Look, I'm not going to pretend these haven't changed how I work. They have. Dramatically. Here's the lineup.

  • ⭐ FAVORITE
    Claude by Anthropic

    My AI of choice, and frankly, it isn't close. Claude has saved me hundreds of hours - reviewing my code, patiently explaining why my code is wrong, fixing my code, then diplomatically declining to comment on how my code got that way in the first place. It has the patience of a saint and the recall of someone who actually read the documentation. It built half this website, debugged the other half, and has yet to make me feel bad about a single questionable architectural decision. (It also wrote this description. Make of that what you will.)

  • ChatGPT by OpenAI

    The one that put AI assistants on the map for most people, and still a solid second option in my rotation. Good for a quick answer, a second opinion, or when I want to see how a different model approaches the same problem. It has also become my go-to for generating images and icons - a convenience that has completely annihilated whatever was left of my Photoshop skills. (RIP. They weren't great to begin with, but still.)

  • Gemini by Google

    Google's contender. Deep Google Workspace integration makes it genuinely useful in that context, and it's improving at a fast clip. I keep it in the toolkit for anything living in the Google ecosystem, or when I need to triangulate across multiple models.

Did I miss something? Think there's a tool I need in my life?

Tell me about it