Tools Page

Mission: Posting links to programs that can be used as tools. Have a suggestion for a program? A program you can't live without? Click on the "contact" link at the bottom of the page and send your suggestion in.

Needful programs to perform tasks:

Virus Removal Tools:

These weblinks lead to tools/programs designed especially for removing certain virus'
Symantec's Virus Removal Tools
Kaspersky Lab has developed free virus removal tools. If your computer has been infected by any of the viruses listed below, you can download a free removal utility here.
McAfee's AVERT Labs "This collection of utilities is offered by McAfee's AVERT Labs to accomplish unique tasks that are not commonly encountered during typical use of our anti-virus products"

RootKit Revealers

Sysinternals " RootkitRevealer" is an advanced patent-pending root kit detection utility. It runs on Windows NT 4 and higher and its output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit. RootkitRevealer successfully detects all persistent rootkits published at www.rootkit.com, including AFX, Vanquish and HackerDefender (note: RootkitRevealer is not intended to detect rootkits like Fu that don't attempt to hide their files or registry keys). If you use it to identify the presence of a rootkit please let us know!"
F-Secure's Internet Security 2006 has "Real-time integrated antispyware, Rootkit Scanner to detect hidden malware, Child Time Lock in Parental Control, Real-time blackhole list (RBL) support in antispam, Virus World Map". Try it for 30 days free.
GhostBuster Rootkit Detection program at Microsofts web site looks like a cool program for getting hard to delete spyware/rootkits out of your system. There is even a boot disk available.

See more on my PC SECURITY PAGE

HardDrive Diagnostic Tools:

Hard Drive Diagnostic Tools
Mfg	Download Link
Fujitsu	Diagnostic Tools
Hitachi (IBM)	Drive Fitness Test
IBM PC Doctor	IBM
Maxtor	PowerMax
Quantum (Maxtor)	PowerMax
Seagate	SeaTools Online
Western Digital	Data Lifeguard
PC Doctor	PC Doctor INC.

Tools List:

CPU-Z " is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. CPU-Z does not need to be installed. Just unzip the files in a directory and run the .exe. In order to remove the program, just delete the files, and that's it." Very handy for finding out motherboard brands
Speedfan "is a freebie program that pays close attention to your data collected by the BIOS -- the temperature and fan RPM. The tool displays the info in the System tray and once configured, you'll get an early warning -- an alarm or e-mail ". If you use an Intel motherboard use Intel Active Monitor.
Syspad "XP Syspad recovers lost Windows & MS-Office product keys and provides easy access to Windows System utilities!" This little program does a lot! Very handy for quick access to system resources and programs. A "Must Have Tool".
eData Unerase "eDATA Unerase Personal Edition is software used to restore files that have been deleted through normal methods, including accidental deletions from the recycle bin. This is a freeware and basic version of eDATA Unerase. It recovers only deleted files located on local logical disks visible by host OS. This version will not find lost files."
Sysinternals Autoruns gives you a much more robust list of programs and drivers that automarically load under Windows. Much more info than Startup list in MSconfig (see next).
Microsoft has upgraded MSCONFIG.exe. It now includes a "Tools" tab as a quick way to see more information about your computer. It features about a dozen diagnostic services.The download is in the form of a Windows Update. Get it at Microsoft.com/downloads.
Windows Installer CleanUp Utility cleans up left over install files. It's a little scary to use with all the warnings it gives and they make it sound like you have to reinstall the program afterwards...which doesn't make much sense. Thats MS for you. They say: "The Windows Installer Clean Up Utility is a tool that can be used to remove Windows Installer configuration management information if a problem occurs."
Xp-AntiSpy "The xp-AntiSpy is a little utility that lets you disable some built-in update and authentication 'features' in WindowsXP." This utility program disables WindowsXP from "phoning home".
Safe XP "improves your system performance and makes Windows run faster, more secure and more stable! It is suitable for beginners and experts!" (for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP) product description link. Also check out Game XP from Theorica Software for tweaking your PC for playing games.
Debugging Tools for Windows "You can use Debugging Tools for Windows to debug drivers, applications, and services on systems running Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server codename "Longhorn," as well as for debugging the operating system itself. Versions of the Debugging Tools for Windows package are available for 32-bit x86, native Intel Itanium, and native x64 platforms."
Microsoft Powertoys for XP Use these tools from MS to tweak your system. Not supported by MS though.
Windows Service Pack 2 Support Tools are available free from Microsoft. "The Windows Support Tools for Microsoft Windows XP are intended for use by Microsoft support personnel and experienced users to assist in diagnosing and resolving computer problems." Go HERE to find them. If the link don't work right for you goto www.Microsoft.com/downloads and search for "Support Tools". Windows Verification is required of course....
Check out these batch files for backing up drivers in Windows from PCWorld. A good thing to do before reinstalling Windows and having the latest drivers ready to go.
PC Inspector File Recovery is a German product for recovering lost files. Works to recover files even after a disk format. PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x is a data recovery software tool that is made available free of charge.

Sysinternals has a great collection of software tools. I recommend trying Autoruns and Process Explorer. "Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded." & Autoruns "shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them".

Systerac XP Tools "Systerac XP Tools are an amateur and professional's tool for optimizing windows xp performance, identify problems and bottlenecks and make sure that your PC is running at top efficiency and speed. Tweak your XP for optimal results." You can download a trial version good for 14 days.
Foldershare allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends." Just by logging in to the Foldershare website you can transfer files between computers running thier program. Works with Google Desktop2 also as a plug-in (making it possible to search computers on your network, sweet!).

PC Inspector File Recovery 4.x is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. Restore deleted files to anywhere you want. [Works rather good and it is free, cy]
Restoration is another free tool for restoring deleted/lost files. The big advantage with this one is that it will fit on a floppy disk. [i didn't have much luck with this program though...cy]G SPOT codec information appliance Analyses videos on your computer and tells you what you need to open them with as well as a whole bunch of other information about your file.Startup Control Panel v2.8 "Startup Control Panel is a nifty control panel applet that allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts." [Haven't tried it yet but it sounds good, cy]
AnalogX is a great site for finding tools. This guy makes all kinds of interesting programs.
Darik's Boot and Nuke is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers.
Core FTP "This secure FTP client gives you a fast, easy, reliable way to update and maintain your website via FTP. It also provides a secure method (via SSL, TLS, or SFTP) to upload / download files to and from FTP servers." Free for personnel use.
"AMD Athlon™ Processor Utilities and Updates" has got some cool tools for seeing whats going on with your processor. Including AMD Power Monitor which is "used to monitor the current frequency, voltage, utilization, and power savings of each core of each processor in a system" [reboot needed after install, cy]. I also liked AMD CPUInfo "This Windows® application executes and displays the return data from the CPUID instruction set and displays Hypertransport™ information if the processor supports it. This application also shows the maximum speed of the processor "
X-Setup is a good program for registry tweaking.
ISO Buster The Ultimate CD and DVD data recovery tool. Lots of features of IsoBuster are entirely for free, others need to be paid for. All the functionality prior to version 1.0 is still for free and remains free.
Foxit Software is a free lightweight PDF reader. Starts up MUCH faster than Adobe's Reader.
SmartFTP For file transfers to upload webpages and stuff.
WinPatrol Don't you hate it when you press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and find a dozen mystery programs running you didn't even know were running? WinPatrol gives you greater control over what can run on your machine. You can set it to display additional information about--and approve of--startup programs. You'll also be alerted when something tries to load an IE plug-in or set a cookie. And to get rid of a particularly nasty piece of spyware, you can use the "Delete File on Reboot" feature, so Windows will get rid of it before any other program can protect it or relaunch it. Scotty the Windows Watchdog barks if he spots trouble. Good boy!
WinZip 9.0 The most popular compression utility for Windows, with more than 130 million downloads. Save storage space, dramatically reduce e-mail transmission time, and efficiently archive documents
WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

DVD and Media programs:

Media:

MP3 Knife is a simple MP3 editor, very simple. Just select a start point and a end point, click save and your done. Runs on Java.
BurnOn CD/DVD is a free CD& DVD burning and mastering application. Windows XP lacks a DVD burning and authoring program but you can get this for free.
Picasa is a free picture viewer and organizer provided free by the fine people at Google. "Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized." [Requires you to have Windows 2000/XP and IE 5.0+.] The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button does a good job of automatically fixing or enhancing photos.

Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation software program designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP. It is alot like the Paint program that comes with windows but is a lot more powerful. This software recently has had a major update. It has been optimized to improve its performance and a few new tools have been added as well.

Irfanview is a great Picture viewer. It's fast and lightweight. It can also play media files like MP3's. It also can convert pictures from one format to another which is handy for changing big BMP files to smaller JPEGs. It also allows you to do some light editing of pictures. I highly recommend it.
Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

These programs are intended to protect or back up your own DVD's:

DVD Shrink This is the best program I have found for making backup copies of DVD's onto a 4.7G blank DVD. [try this direct download link: Here! doesn't always work though :( ] You can use this program to burn DVD's too if you have Nero CD\DVD burning program installed on your computer.[vers 3.1 seems to work better than ver 3.2, cy]
DVD Decrypter If you have trouble with the encryption or get strange errors while using DVDshrink use this program to save the DVD to your hard drive (e.g. "c:\") then use DVD shrink to compress it down and burn to a DVD
AnyDVD is a driver, which descrambles DVD-Movies automatically in the background. This DVD appears unprotected and region code free for all applications and the Windows operating system as well. This is an essential program for backing up your DVD's! Also works for copyright protected CD's.
DVD43 (dvd for free) This program sits in your sys tray with a little 'smiley' icon : ) and waits for you to insert a DVD. When it detects a DVD with copright protection it changes to a frown face and then to a green happy face after it disables the CSS protection scheme. Kinda funny to watch actually. Helps with the stubborn/hard to back up movies. I read on some forums that after 30 days it aint free no more. Haven't had it long enough to find out if thats true. Hopefully there is a hack out there to straighten that little problem out! If there is look for it here...
#1 DVD Ripper Cost $34.95 but comes highly recommended from maximumpc They also make a program to rip DVD Audio

* freeprogrammingresources.com is loaded with free media programs. Be sure to sheck it out.

Security programs:

Locate PC. Sends a secret email message from your stolen PC... ...that may help you get it back! [free]

DNSstuff.com lets you look up a lot of info about your I.P. address even geological data. They don't care much for the FasterFox extension for Firfox though so you may be blocked on some info... d-oh! -r

Silent Runners is a Viual Basic Script (VBS) that scans your computer and outputs a text file that list programs, add-ons, etc that start with Windows. Use ProcessLibrary.com to look up suspected entries.
Eraser "Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS. Eraser is Free software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License." This program uses Dept. of Defense protocals for overwriting data and even more if your really paranoid. Also you can find a newer version hosted here >Eraser [I've used the old version for a while and it works good, cy]

Cookie Viewer "Discover the information that web sites store on your computer. This Power Tool automatically scans your computer, looking for "cookies" created by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Netscape's Navigator and Mozilla Project's FireFox web browsers. It can then display the data stored in each one. It can also delete any unwanted cookies stored by these browsers." Find this program and many more at Karenware.com

KeePass "This is the official homepage of KeePass, the free, open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager." This free little program saves all of your passwords in an easy to use encrypted program. Allows you to save the whole thing (program and saved passwords) to a flash drive for added security and also makes it so you can take your list with you easily. [recommended, cy]

Active Ports My computer is driving me crazy accessing the internet all the time. I am worried that I might have some trojan horse or malware is sending all my information to some nefarious hacker (black hat?) . So I found this program that monitors all my ports and tells me what I.P. its connecting to as well as what program is using it [yes I scanned with antivirus and ad aware,cy].

Boot Discs

Boot disc list

Bart PE "Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks."
INSERT makes a pretty decent Boot Disc. It runs a Linux OS from the boot up.

Wi-Fi:

NetStumbler is a program to discover wireless networks with your wi-fi card.
Boingo is a service that also finds wireless access points. They have a free and nationwide paid service available.
Airsnare is an intrusion detection system to help you monitor your wireless network. It notfies you as soon as a machine connects to your wireless network, that is not included in your list of friendly MAC addresses. Alternate download at Snapfiles

Misc. Stuff

Getbackdata for NTFS Runtime Software's data recovery software will help you rescue your lost or inaccessible files from any imaginable data recovery disaster. $100
Zero Assumption Recovery provides a suite of highly effective and thorough data recovery software for Microsoft® Windows™ operating systems. Free Trial.

* see Maximum PC's Unauthorized guide to Windows XP Spring 2006 for instructions on how to use both of these.

Cool stuff:

WallWatcher collects, displays, and analyzes log information from Routers and firewalls
Grouper Grouper is a new Windows based application that allows users to share their personal media within private groups. Grouper uses P2P technology connecting you directly to your friends’ hard drives where you can share large files in a safe, encrypted environment. Grouper is a simple install and requires no firewall reconfiguration [I tried this one with a freind and works good but I might switch to Qnext, cy]
QNext One powerful P2P software to communicate, share and interact with rich media with complete security and no restrictions on file size. [haven't tried this one yet but it looks promising and has a remote access option, cy] Also has QnextMyPC, a remote access program. This program also is an Instant Messenger that works with MSN ,ICQ, AIM and Yahoo! [Pretty damn cool]
ePrompter ePrompter automatically and simultaneously checks and retrieves your email messages from up to sixteen password protected email accounts AND lets you read, delete and respond to any of your messages with a simple click on the account of your choice - without ever having to launch your email program or go to your webmail's site. [this works with GMail and Hotmail and is a cinch to set up, cy]

Hacking:

Odd stuff:

Karens Ware is a website by a programmer who makes LOTS of cool little tools and toys for “tweaking” stuff on your computer. Take a look at her Cookie Viewer so you can see the data associated with the "cookies" your web browser has.

CurrPorts v1.02 CurrPorts displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer.

Mail PassView v1.31 Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the passwords and other account details for the following email clients: Outlook Express , Microsoft Outlook 2000 (POP3 and SMTP Accounts only) , Microsoft Outlook 2002/2003 (POP3, IMAP, HTTP and SMTP Accounts) , IncrediMail , Eudora , Netscape 6.x/7.x , Mozilla Thunderbird , Group Mail Free , Yahoo! Mail - If the password is saved in Yahoo! Messenger application. , Hotmail/MSN mail - If the password is saved in MSN Messenger application. , Gmail - If the password is saved by Gmail Notifier application.

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