The Windows Inspection Tool Set provides a suite of tools which make it easy to view and monitor exactly what's happening on your PC.

You can look at running processes, for instance, or check the status of your Windows services. The program can show you your system's network interfaces, and any connections which might currently be open. And there are modules to display details on your drives, network shares, logged-on users, Windows events, running drivers and more.

While this all sounds good - and the interface is initially appealing, too - the details are sometimes a little disappointing. The "Processes" viewer has maybe 1% of the power of Process Hacker or Process Explorer, for instance: even Task Manager provides more information.

Still, browse a little further and you'll find one or two more useful modules. Take the Windows Event Log, for instance. There's none of the hassles you get with the standard Windows Event Viewer, no trees to navigate or logs to select: just launch the module and it'll display all your events, sorted into date order, with the most recent at the top. These then refresh automatically, so if you're trying to diagnose a current problem then you'll see events pop up almost as soon as they appear. And if you want to, say, just view "Warning" messages, then you can apply a simple text filter in a second or two.

And the program also provides its own Event Monitor, which can report on what's happening to various aspects of your system: system resources, process launches, driver loads and unloads, network connections, Windows services and more.

Choose the System Resources category, for instance, and the Event Monitor will immediately show you which processes are using the most threads, and have a high number of handles open. With a click this window can stay on top of your other applications, and then it'll update as you use your PC, so you can continue to run other programs as normal and be alerted when significant events occur.