Sysinternals (which is now a part of Microsoft) has always been highly respected, and a lot of really cool time-saving utilities have come from the group over the years. Until recently, you had to download Sysinternals utilities in order to use them. While far from a hassle, Sysinternals utilities get occasional updates, and it can be difficult to constantly strive to stay up on the latest version of a utility. No more!

Microsoft has implemented a method by which a number of Sysinternals utilities can be run directly from the Web. Dubbed Sysinternals Live, the service lets you execute Sysinternals tools from the Web without manually downloading the tools to your system. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as http://live.sysinternals.com/<toolname> or \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname>. 

Behind the scenes, when you use Sysinternals Live, the utility is downloaded and cached; but now, if you reference the online location in a script, for example, you know you’re using the latest version of the utility. Create shortcuts on your desktop to the tools and know that you don’t need to download the tool to use it.

The utilities run through Sysinternals Live behave just as if the tools are locally installed. Figure A shows a tool I ran on my local machine.
Figure A

Click the image to enlarge.

For a complete list of tools available through Sysinternals Live, go to http://live.sysinternals.com/.

Security note: Any time you download stuff from the Internet, there is a risk that you’ll get more than you want. Although the Sysinternals Live site should be safe, if it does get infected with malware, you could open yourself up.