There is alot of usefull tools availeble for techs and some of them are applications we use daily. Such an application is PuTTy or Nutty which is a better choise since texts that are links open in default browser if you click them. Download them and have a go or use them as a portable app on you memory stick.

Angry IP-Scanner is a very fast and usefull tool to probe the network for machines. A tip is to go to options and raise number of threads to 2000(max) to scan a hole C-NET winthin seconds.

SIW - System information for windows This tool probes the computer for information about licenses and installed programs. When you need a password that's masked you could use the eureka function. This password unmasker don't work for Mozilla Firefox though. If you know one that does, please comment or send me an email.