SyncToy helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily. SyncToy 2.0 for Windows is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.

There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

We have collected feedback from the discussion forum on the Windows XP Professional Photography web site, from customer feedback surveys, from a large number of professional and hobbyist photographers at Microsoft, and from various world-wide forums, sites, reviews and blogs on the web. Based on your feedback, the following features were added to this release of SyncToy:

• Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition.
• True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions.
• Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching.
• Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).
• Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off.
• Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.
• Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface.
• Re-Architect Sync Engine: The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases.
• Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.
• Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder.
• 64-Bit Support: SyncToy now has a native 64-bit build (x64 only) for 64-bit versions of Windows.
• Folder pair rename
• Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents created under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded. Usability improvements for the sub-folder exclusion dialog.
• Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from MyDocuments to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.
• Setup Improvements: Integrated setup with single self-extracting archive file and no extra downloads if you already have .NET Framework 2.0 installed. Enabled silent install for the SyncToy Installer file (see readme.txt file for more information). Removed combine and subscribe actions.
• Removed combine and subscribe actions.

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The complete post is taken Microsoft Download website

For those who do not have an idea what I am talking about, let me tell you about the best part of this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. When Chinese athlete, Li was coming down after lighting the olympic torch, nearly everyone noticed the biggest Blue Screen of Death ever, projected on the stadium’s roof. According to the news sites, it was there for nearly an hour, but was noticed only when a broadcast camera showed up its image. Few of the viewers in stadium has also capture pictures of same. Since then, every where in any technical forums, discussion is going on, about the same. Everyone is blaming Microsoft for the fault. But is it seriously an issue that should be dealt by Microsoft only. Lets check out.

The first point made by those criticizers is that why didn’t they used Linux, or Mac, instead of Windows. The obvious reason is the simplicity offered by Windows, over other operating systems, which is an advantage when there are so many of peripherals connected.

Next question obviously is why only XP, and not Windows Vista. For that, Olympic organizers committee said, that after so much of negative reviews of Vista, they didn’t felt like it will be worth going. Even Microsoft is against using XP, as it definitely is outdated, by today’s standard. Although Vista is resource hungry, but being far more stable now, it should have been the choice for opening ceremony.

Are we sure that XP version used in Beijing was not pirated, as China is well known for its piracy only? For that question, the answer is No, XP wasn’t pirated as it would not have been possible to use this many peripherals with normal XP, so the XP used should have been the one for Embedded Systems, which is by far not yet pirated.

Techies also asked, why it doesn’t restarted automatically in case of Fatal error, as in case of normal PC usage. Obvious answer is that XP version used was for Embedded Systems, so the user should be quite aware of basics of troubleshooting, hence showing up the troubleshooting information is necessary.

So, the fault definitely was not from Microsoft side, as they have shipped the right thing to the olympics committee. The fault definitely lies in some other hands. The fault must have been from drivers. But which driver actually failed, is not yet known. One reason as stated by some techies is that display drivers cause this kind of errors, most commonly, as they run in kernel mode. That’s why they should have used Linux or Mac. But still Linux or Mac would have failed in that case, the only difference is the information shown on the screen would have been replaced by some stupid animation, or the system would have simply restarted.

Restarting seems a good option here, as the Olympics committee officials just needed to run those projectors and LCD’s, they are not supposed to debug. But should Microsoft have provided the patch to simply restart the system, in case of failure, or a new OS for that matter. Obviously No. They are not supposed to write a new patch specifically for an event. May be Olympic committee should have asked them for that patch.

And why not some one saw that screen for nearly an hour, and restarted the system. That’s a human fault obviously, from organizer’s end. Even though the system didn’t restarted automatically, some one should have taken care of that. And then, its because of faulty drivers and not because of XP’s architecture. So, why is everyone blaming Microsoft for something they don’t even have any relation with. May be this is the price that Microsoft is paying for being the best in OS market.