SysDoctor: anatomy of a Windows maintenance utility in C#/.NET

Everyone who looks after Windows machines has amassed that folder of stray .bat and .ps1 scripts — each solving one thing, none talking to the others. SysDoctor was born from pulling that knowledge into a single, cohesive console utility: Windows diagnostics and optimization in C# 12 / .NET 10, with a terminal interface any technician can use without memorizing commands. This is a walkthrough of the engineering behind it.

System maintenance calls for a tool that runs on any machine, without installing a world of dependencies and without a heavy interface. A self-contained console app (win-x64) solves that: one executable, zero setup. C# 12 on .NET 10 gives native access to Windows via System.Management (WMI) and a mature ecosystem for asynchronous I/O — and Spectre.Console delivers a TUI with tables, colors, and status that makes the terminal feel like a product, not a raw prompt.

The core is simple and deliberate: a Program.cs that only orchestrates the menu, and a Scripts/ folder where each operation is an isolated module (InfoMachine.cs, ClearDisk.cs, ClearRAM.cs…). Adding a new function means creating a file and registering an entry — without touching the rest. A GlobalUsings.cs centralizes the namespaces and keeps each module lean.

The tool organizes seventeen operations into two columns — the split that separates understanding the machine from acting on it:

• Diagnostics — hardware/OS, Windows integrity check, internet speed test, ping, processor temperature, restore points, updates, and a map of network connections.
• Optimization & maintenance — cleaning temporary files, freeing RAM, clearing the network cache, latency optimization, Wi-Fi tweaks, Windows tunings, post-install setup, and running Windows Defender.

• Async by default — I/O operations (network, disk, WMI) use async/await, so the TUI never freezes while a speed test or a cleanup runs.
• Privilege under control — the app detects whether it's elevated and shows the status; it works without admin, and the functions that benefit from elevation warn you instead of failing silently.
• Handled failures, not crashes — UnauthorizedAccessException and the like are caught with a clear message; the user understands what happened rather than seeing a stack trace.
• UTF-8 and special characters — the output is designed to render accents and symbols correctly, something most maintenance scripts ignore.

SysDoctor is an open source project, but it carries the same discipline I apply to Meta Dados' production systems: separating orchestration from execution, treating errors as part of the contract, and designing for whoever operates it — not just whoever writes the code. A good tool is one that disappears so the problem can show itself.