As a computer technician my job mostly requires working on Windows machines. Macs are now starting to show up but due to their reliability most of the Macs we deal with will be generally nothing more than software issues.

One of the greatest tools for my ability to fix Windows machines is ironically the one thing that Windows users, especially IT "gurus", mock... my Mac. To many in either camp it seems like a travesty to use a Mac for this. To Mac users it's a travesty to use a Mac to fix Windows instead of using it to get people off Windows and in the other camp it's a travesty to use a Mac let alone fix Windows but the reality is that Windows makes it difficult to fix Windows.

The truth is that this can be done with a Linux CD as well but I don't often have such a disc and let's be honest the true irony of the situation is way more fun.

So how do you fix Windows with a Mac? Well, straight away many of you would be thinking I use Parallels but that's not the case. Yes I do use Parallels because I need to run some Windows tools but the reality is most of the problems need Windows to not be running because some of the issues arise with protected system files.

For example, one of the common problems is NTOSKRNL.exe becomes more corrupt than a Bush administration congressman. The problem is that NTOSKRNL.exe is a file that is protected by Windows because it's the file that runs Windows. Added to this any attempt to use Windows to fix this issue is broken by the fact that you simply can't just copy the file from one Windows machine to the other which leads me to a tool that we use a lot in our business which Phil just recently gave away as a competition prize (not to me however :( ;) ). I'll take about the drive adapter later in this post but rest assured it's needed to fix this problem and it's a pain because you need to copy from one drive (working) to the other drive (bung) meaning a computer needs to be in between... the Mac.

So why use a Mac? The simple answer is that Mac OS X cares about as much about the oxymoron of Windows security as a politician cares as much about other people than himself. Windows security is not affective under a Mac and so you find the Mac able to copy files between machines very easily because it doesn't know what to do with the files anyway and most importantly it doesn't care about those files anyway.

This also tends to be the same when transferring files from one machine to another where those files are in a user's profile. Documents and Settings is a folder that has permissions that prevent other users from getting in unless they have admin privileges. However, it also has files that can't be touched even with admin privileges because the system needs control of those files. It makes copying profiles sometimes difficult. Enter the Mac. For the same reason as stated above the Mac makes this problem disappear and moving profiles between machines is relatively easy process.

The interesting thing about all this is that without installing anything I've been able to sort out issues mostly thanks to the UNIX underpinnings. Install MacFUSE and you're able to write to NTFS partitions instead of just the reading ability. This makes things undeniably easy to fix problems that are the result of an OS getting in the way of itself.

Working between Macs is even easier while at the same time adding similar issues as with Windows with permissions. That's where the UNIX aspect of Mac OS X comes in. This relatively unlimited power can fix any problem on a Mac because the tools are incredibly powerful. This however invokes the catch phrase of Spider Man... "With great power comes great responsibility". In the wrong hands you can do uber amounts of damage.

But let's get back to something I alluded to earlier, the drive adapter. Here's largely what my toolkit consists of: