Microsoft was better at software in the ’90s, and these still-useful Windows utilities prove it

I miss the Windows of the ’90s. Microsoft seemed to have a utility for everything, whether you needed to tweak Windows, troubleshoot a problem, automate a task, or simply do something Windows itself didn’t make particularly easy. Plenty of those little tools have disappeared over the years, but some survived—and I’m still surprised by how useful they are.

Microsoft PowerToys

The original Windows toy box

PowerToys has a wonderfully scrappy origin story. During Windows 95 development, Microsoft engineers built little programs to test ideas, prototype features, or simply make their own jobs easier. Raymond Chen, who worked on Windows, later described the…