Yikes!

One of my favorite sites for figuring out exactly what is going on in Windows is Sysinternals. Run by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, these members of the high pantheon of programming have compiled a collection of wonderful (and generally free) utilities that allow you to poke into the dank corners of Windows internal operation. These were the people that discovered the whole Sony root-kit scandal. Well, this month, they got bought out by Microsoft:

On My Way to Microsoft!
I�m very pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Winternals Software and Sysinternals. Bryce Cogswell and I founded both Winternals and Sysinternals (originally NTInternals) back in 1996 with the goal of developing advanced technologies for Windows. We�ve had an incredible amount of fun over the last ten years working on a wide range of diverse products such as Winternals Administrator�s Pak, Protection Manager, Defrag Manager, and Recovery Manager, and the dozens of Sysinternals tools, including Filemon, Regmon and Process Explorer, that millions of people use every day for systems troubleshooting and management. There�s nothing more satisfying for me than to see our ideas and their implementation have a positive impact.

That�s what makes being acquired by Microsoft especially exciting and rewarding. I�m joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I�ll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there�s no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate.

So what�s going to happen to Winternals and Sysinternals? Microsoft is still evaluating the best way to leverage the many different technologies that have been developed by Winternals. Some will find their ways into existing Microsoft products or Windows itself and others will continue on as Microsoft-branded products. As for Sysinternals, the site will remain for the time being while Microsoft determines the best way to integrate it into its own community efforts, and the tools will continue to be free to download.

Personally, I remain committed to the Sysinternals and Windows IT pro communities and so I�ll continue to blog here, to write about Windows technologies, and to speak at conferences. Until I know my Microsoft email address and post it you can continue to contact me at mark@sysinternals.com.

I�m looking forward to making Windows an even better platform for all of us!

This is definitely great news for Microsoft to have two people of Mark and Bryce's caliber join their team but I would hie yourself to the Sysinternals website and download all of their utilities and whatever source code you can find. You may not need them now but their programs are amazing diagnostic and repair tools. I would hate to see them get swept behind the MSFT firewall...