Free Stocking Stuffers

It is that time of year where we are spending all of our money purchasing gifts for others and for ourselves. I thought I would take this time to list some of my favorite utilities that are highly useful and will not cost you a thing.

All of these are free downloads that can save you time and effort when trying to solve or prevent problems with your PC or computer network. Consider them stocking stuffers for your USB flash drive!

SIW http://www.gtopala.com/
SIW stands for System Information for Windows. This program will show you absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about your PC. It will list out all of your installed hardware. It will show all installed programs. It will show installation serial numbers for MS Office and Windows. It will show you all of the stored passwords on your system. Basically, if it is a part of your PC, you can see it listed here.

The program is small and does not install. You can run it directly from a USB drive. It works on all versions of Windows.

I cannot tell you how many times I have found SIW to be a handy tool stored on my USB drive.

SIW is free for personal use in a non business environment. A technician’s version costs about $70.

UBCD4WIN http://www.ubcd4win.com/
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. This program is an offshoot of the Ultimate Boot CD for *NIX systems. UBCD4Win is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem for Windows. It comes loaded with antivirus and antispyware tools, imaging and backup software, hard disk drive recovery tools, support for burning files to CD or DVD and several diagnostic tools.

I have personally used this CD to restore a lost partition table on a Domain Controller server. If the partition was not repaired in this particular circumstance, the whole network would have had to be rebuilt. By not having to completely rebuild the entire network, it helped me save a client several thousand dollars worth of labor.

Obtaining and building the CD is a little involved but the tutorials and wizards included with the program are easy to follow.

Uptime http://microsoft.com/
This small utility from Microsoft tells you how long your workstation or server has been running. The most useful thing you can do with this utility, however, is to use it with the /s flag at the command line. The result will give you a listing of how often your computer was restarted and will show you any Blue Screen of Death error codes if your PC shut down as a result of one.

I like to put a copy of uptime.exe in the Windows directory to make it executable from the command line. I will then run this command:

C:\uptime /s > uptime.txt

This will put the results of uptime into a text file on your C: drive called uptime.txt.

Then

C:\notepad uptime.txt

will open the results of uptime in Notepad.

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/
Windows Directory Statistics can help you find out just why your hard disk drive is full. It breaks down how big each of your folders are on your hard disk drives.

CCleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/
CCleaner will clean up dead registry entries and help clean out temporary files not needed by Windows any longer. It will also clean out your internet history if you would like it to. I use it regularly to help keep my workstations running efficiently.

CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/
CutePDF can create a good looking PDF from almost any Windows program. It is smaller and faster than Adobe Acrobat but not as fully featured. If you are looking for basic PDF documentation at a low cost, give this a try.

IP Scanner http://www.angryziber.com/ipscan/
Angry IP Scanner is a handy utility to see what IP addresses are active on your network. I mostly use this tool for finding IPs of Wireless Access Points and network printers. As of last month, Symantec had added this software as a virus/spyware threat and will delete it from your system. However, I have used this program for several years and it is not dangerous and does not install anything on your system that you did not intend to install.

RDP Remote Enabler http://www.intelliadmin.com/
If you have ever had to access a workstation on a network via Remote Desktop but it was not enabled you will know great frustration. With RDP Remote Enabler, if you can remote in to another computer on the same network (say, the server) you can enable Remote Desktop on the target PC.

NetStumbler http://www.netstumbler.com/
This program will help you find and troubleshoot your wireless network. You can verify network configurations, find locations with poor coverage in a WLAN, detect causes of wireless interference and detect unauthorized access points.

MS Defender http://microsoft.com/
SpyBot http://www.safer-networking.org/
Defender is now built into Windows Vista and is available as a free download from Microsoft for XP. I have found that when you install Defender on XP, it does a very good job for preventing further spyware infection—especially if you install it immediately after you install XP. Defender does not do so well in actually cleaning up your PC once it is already infected. Instead, I use SpyBot for infections. It is fast, free, and effective.

Auslogics Disk Degrag http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/
You should defragment your hard disk drives once a month. This free and easy to use program is quick and efficient. It will help keep your PC running like the day you first used it.

Free Commander http://www.freecommander.com/
Free Commander is a nice alternative to the standard Windows file manager. It has a tabbed and multipanel interface, built in Zip and archive handling, checksum verification and it allows you to customize your column views.

Royale Theme for XP
Tired of the same old Luna theme for Windows XP? I was. I found this official theme on the MS website:

New Zealand Bliss version:
http://www.microsoft.com/

Windows XP Media Edition version:
http://www.softpedia.com/

These are just different enough to refresh your desktop.

I hope you find some of these programs useful. If you do, please support the author of the software. Most free software programmers accept donations in return for the free service they provide.

Mark Barhorst, MCP
ThrottleNet, Inc.
mark@throttlenet.com

Mark Barhorst is a Microsoft Certified Professional. He has been working on complex business IT needs since 2001.