Software Tools

Archive

Boot

BootPart is an easy tool for adding additional partitions to the Windows NT multi boot menu (for example, add the OS/2 boot manager or a Linux partition). http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Clone

Recommended by Alasdair. http://clonezilla.org/

Console

http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

PowerShell

Windows PowerShell Install using Microsoft Internet Explorer. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx

Blog of Windows PowerShell team http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell/

Database

SQuirreL - SQL - Universal SQL Client. ../java/jdbc`

DbVisualizer Free http://minq.se/products/dbvis/

Development

WinMerge http://winmerge.org/ (should try http://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/index.html}DiffMerge sometime).

BareTail - A free real-time log file monitoring tool http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/

Diagnostics

Process Explorer ../windows/processes.html

Sysinternals Suite by Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/0e18b180-9b7a-4c49-8120-c47c5a693683.aspx

Unknown Devices http://www.halfdone.com/Development/UnknownDevices/ helps you find what those unknown devices in Device Manager really are.

smartctl ../linux/system Provides advanced warning of hard disk degradation and failure.

DVD

http://www.avsmedia.com/DVDPlayer

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Things you didn’t know VLC media player can do: http://www.unixmen.com/software/404-things-you-didnt-know-vlc-media-player-can-do
http://www.nerdlogger.com/search/label/VLC

File Management

The ultimate tool for Windows Explorer http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/StExBar

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/ is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (very nice… I used it for a friends computer… well worth installing).

24/07/2020, I am not sure if WinDirStat is supported any more. One of our corporate customers uses TreeSize Free! https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

Firewall

To try: Zonealarm (BBC News - Click - <Free>)

Fonts

http://www.proggyfonts.com/ Proggy programmer’s fonts

Graphics

To try, http://www.getpaint.net/

HTML

http://www.nvu.com/

ISO

../windows/iso Creating ISO disks from Windows

http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/ WinCDEmu allows mounting CD/DVD images by clicking at the image files in Windows Explorer: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wincdemu/

Launchy

To try: http://www.launchy.net Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows

Logging

To try:

http://tailforwin32.sourceforge.net/
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/ A free real-time log file monitoring tool

Media

http://www.videolan.org/ VLC media player is a free cross-platform media player (MPEG, DivX, Ogg, and many more) as well as DVDs and VCDs.

Mindmap

http://freemind.sourceforge.net FreeMind - free mind mapping software

Miscellaneous

To try: http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html Sizer is a freeware utility that allows you to resize any window to an exact, predefined size}}.

Musix

To Try - http://www.mediamonkey.com/ (BBC News - Click - <Free>)

Office

http://symphony.lotus.com/ IBM Lotus Symphony

https://huckster.dev.java.net/ Huckster is a simple program for doing presentations.

Partition Editor

http://partedmagic.com/ Parted Magic Recommended by Alasdair.

Gnome Partition Editor

The http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ Gnome Partition Editor has a LiveCD which can be used to resize NTFS partitions.

Download the GParted LiveCD ISO image.
Optionally burn the ISO image to a CD.
Boot from the CD or straight from the ISO image.
Hit <ENTER> when you see the message “Boot:”.
Select language, keyboard and screen resolution from the menus.
The partitioner should start and the following steps are intuitive. Have fun!

Partimage

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page Partimage is a Linux utility which saves partitions having a supported filesystem to an image file. Most Linux and Windows filesystems are supported.

PDF

See ../pdf/links PDF Links, PDFCreator

Photo

Alasdair recomends this file recovery software: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Presentation

http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/DemoHelperInfo

Remote

https://www.crossloop.com/ CrossLoop Simple Secure Screen Sharing.

To try:

http://www.codeplex.com/Terminals Terminals is a multi tab terminal services/remote desktop client}}.
To Try - LogMeIn (BBC News - Click - <Free>)
https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp
http://www.teamviewer.com/. Recommended to me at EuroPython 2010.

Rescue

See Photo category (above) for recovery software.

http://sysresccd.org/ SystemRescueCd

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

http://www.ubcd4win.com/ Ultimate Boot CD for Windows Repaired GB’s laptop…

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/ Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer}}

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Bart’s Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD.

RSS

http://www.rssowl.org RSSOwl

Screen Capture

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669985.aspx HTML Image Editor

Try the following:

http://blogs.geekdojo.net/brian/articles/Cropper.aspx Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the .Net platform.
http://www.ntwind.com/software/winsnap.html WinSnap
http://www.windowclippings.com/ Window Clippings

Search

To try (Shareware) http://www.wingrep.com/ Windows Grep is a tool for searching files for text strings that you specify.

Security

AVG Anti Virus

http://free.grisoft.com/ AVG Anti Virus

To disable, switch off Resident Shield.

Note

Install AVG 8.0 Free Edition without the LinkScanner component

http://free.grisoft.com/ww.faq.num-1238#faq_1238

Run the installation with the parameters:

/REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

Uninstall

An uninstaller can be downloaded from http://www.avg.com/download-tools

Issues

http://www.avg.com/filedir/util/support/avg_resacc_en.exe

ClamWin Antivirus

Probably worth trying it out: http://www.clamwin.com/

KeePass

http://keepass.info/ KeePass, the free, open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.

RISING Antivirus

http://www.freerav.com/ Simon Berriman is trying it out

Spybot

http://www.spybot.info/ Spybot - Search & Destroy

ultraedit UltraEdit

Twitter

http://www.twhirl.org/

Utility

http://www.autohotkey.com/ AutoHotkey is a free, open-source utility for Windows. With it, you can automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd2.html NirCmd is a small command-line utility that allows you to do some useful tasks without displaying any user interface.

http://www.zabkat.com/ xplorer2 exponential growth to file management productivity.

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ Unlocker

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2007/06/03/train-to-be-a-keyboard-master-with-keyboard-jedi.aspx Train to be a Keyboard Master with Keyboard Jedi

http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/ WCD - Wherever Change Directory - Another Norton Change Directory (NCD) clone with more features.

http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html nLite - Windows Installation Customizer

Virtual Desktop

Download and install Virtual Desktop Manager from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

How to use: Right click on the taskbar, click toolbars, then click Desktop Manager.

If the taskbar is locked and you want to resize the manager, you will have to unlock it.

XML

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=72d6aa49-787d-4118-ba5f-4f30fe913628&displaylang=en Microsoft - XML Notepad 2007