Utilities
A43
Website (
http://www.shawneelink.net/~bgmiller/)
A43 is a file manager with integrated text editor, zip/unzip functions, file search and dual-pane view.
Angry IP Scanner
Website (
http://www.angryziber.com/ipscan/)
Angry IP scanner is a very fast IP scanner. It can ping a range of IP addresses to check if they are alive, then optionally resolve hostnames, scan ports, etc. It is useful for network administrators to monitor and manage their networks.
a-squared HiJackFree
Website (
http://www.hijackfree.com/en/)
a-squared HiJackFree allows you to view and edit the configured autoruns, list explorer/browser add-ons, look at installed services, view all currently opened ports, and list all running processes. It helps in the detection and removal of all types of spyware, adware, trojans and worms.
BruteBenchmark
Website (
http://www.ge*cities.com/andreigacef...Benchmark.html)
BruteBenchmark checks the performance of your CPU, video card and hard disk. It computes a score for each quickly, and you can use it to compare against other entries in the database.
CurrPorts
Website (
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html)
CurrPorts displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer. For each port in the list, information about the process that opened the port is also displayed, including the process name, full path of the process, version information of the process (product name, file description, and so on), the time that the process was created, and the user that created it.
DiskView
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/DiskView.html)
DiskView shows you a graphical map of your disk. It allows you to determine where a file is located or, by clicking on a cluster, see which file occupies it. You can double-click to get more information about a file to which a cluster is allocated.
Explore2fs
Website (
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm)
Explore2fs is an explorer-type application for browsing Linux ex2fs filesystems under Windows.
Filemon
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/filemon.html)
FileMon monitors and displays file system activity on a system in real-time. Its advanced capabilities make it a powerful tool for exploring the way Windows works, seeing how applications use the files and DLLs, or tracking down problems in system or application file configurations. Filemon's timestamping feature will show you precisely when every open, read, write or delete, happens, and its status column tells you the outcome.
FolderSize
Website (
http://www.sulaco.co.za/downloads.htm)
FolderSize scans a selected drive or folder and reports the size of all the subfolders. The result can be viewed in bytes, percentage of total space or as a bar graph
freeCommander
Website (
http://www.freecommander.com/index_en.htm)
freeCommander is a dual-pane file manager which is more powerful than Windows Explorer. It has a built-in file viewer to view files in hex, binary, text or image format. It has built-in archive handling ability for ZIP (read, write), CAB (read, write) and RAR (read). It supports calculation of folder size, folder comparison/synchronization, file search and filtering etc.
GenControl
Website (
http://www.gensortium.com/products/gencontrol.html)
GenControl is a simple desktop remote control program for Windows 2000 or Windows NT networks. It allows the authorised administrator to remotely control the desktop of another machine over a Windows-based network with any additional software installed on that machine.
hddhealth
Website (
http://panterasoft.com/)
HDD Health monitors hard disks from the system tray using Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T), and alerts you of impending failure.
HDDlife
Website (
http://www.hddlife.com/eng/features.html)
HDDlife constantly monitors the health of your hard drives at regular intervals and informs you about the results of these checks. The current version supports only IDE and ****** ATA disks with standard controllers, while external, RAID and SCSI controllers are not supported.
HotKeyz
Website (
http://www.skynergy.com/hotkeyz.html)
HotKeyz allows you to define hotkeys for executing other application, It features default hotkeys for minimizing, maximizing, restoring or closing the active window. Launch your default e-mail window to compose a new email. Control your WinAmp 2.x without it being focused. Define memo type text and with a hotkey paste your text into your e-mails, documents etc. You can also paste special characters or the current date and time. Open and close your CD-Rom(s). Power off, shutdown, logoff or reboot your PC with a hotkey press. Start your screen saver, hide or unhide your desktop, taskbar or any desktop with a hotkey.
HoverIP
Website (
http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm)
HoverIP contains an integrated set of network tools, including nslookup, ping, trcaeroute and a port scanner.
LC ISO Creator
Website (
http://www.lucersoft.com/freeware.php)
LC ISO Creator creates ISO files from CD/DVD-ROM, which is a great way to backup or archive your CD/DVD-ROM discs.
MultiRes
Website (
http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/multires.shtm)
MultiRes works very much like a 32-bit version of the venerable Microsoft QuickRes 16-bit applet for Windows 95, with administrative scripting facilities and extended capabilities to handle refresh rates and multiple monitors. Supported resolution and refresh rates are accessible from the command-line or from a simple menu that pops up from the system tray. An optional timed confirmation prompt -- enabled by default in the program About box -- ensures that any changes you make can be reversed safely, without fuss.
NetStumbler
Website (
http://www.stumbler.net/index.php?cat=4)
NetStumbler allows you to detect Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) using 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g. You can use it to verify that your network is set up the way you intended, find locations with poor coverage in your WLAN, detect other networks that might be causing interference with your network etc.
PC Wizard 2005
Website (
http://www.cpuid.com/pcw.php)
PC Wziard 2005 is designed for the detection, analysis and benchmarking of hardware. It is able to detect a large scale of system components and supports the latest technologies and standards. This tool is periodically updated (usually once per month) in order to provide most accurate results.
Process Explorer
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/fr.../procexp.shtml)
Process Explorer is an advanced task manager. It is an indispensable tool for both beginners and power users. I use it all the time to kill tasks that refuse to be killed, or find what which processes are still holding on to a particular file or DLL so it refuses to be deleted.
PuTTY
Website (
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
PuTTY is a free SSH, Telnet and Rlogin client for 32-bit Windows systems. It supports the SSH2 protocol.
RegMon
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/regmon.shtml)
Regmon is a registry monitoring utility that will show you which applications are accessing your registry, which keys they are accessing, and the registry data that they are reading and writing - all in real-time. This advanced utility takes you one step beyond what static registry tools can do, to let you see and understand exactly how programs use the registry.
Restoration
Website (
http://www.geocities.jp/br_kato/)
Restoration helps undelete files that were deleted accidentally by mistake. It even work with removable media such as CF or SF cards. You can scan for all files that could be recovered, or filter the results by entering a search term or extension. This program also has a secure wipe feature that makes it impossible to restore deleted files.
SilentNight Micro CD Burner
Website (
http://www.silentnight2004.com/Download.html)
SilentNight Micro CD Burner is a tiny CD burner that lets you select the folder you want to burn to CD, with optional wildcard-based filtering. It supports long file names (Joliet filesystem) multi-session CDs, audio CDs from MP3/WAV files, Burn Proof/Just Link support etc.
SIW
Website (
http://www3.sympatico.ca/gtopala/about_siw.html)
SIW is single-EXE wonder gathers detailed information about your system, such as motherboard, BIOS, CPU, devices, memory, video, drivers, ports, printers etc. It is also a real-time monitor for CPU, memory, pagefile usage, network connections, network traffic etc.
SpaceMonger
Website (
http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html)
SpaceMonger is a tool for keeping track of the free space on your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all the other files in your system.
ssmanager
Website (
http://www.lonewolf.gr/software/)
Screensaver Manager provides various options for activating/deactivating the screensaver. For example, the screensaver could be activated when the mouse cursor is placed at the upper left corner of the screen. It could also be activated by hitting a hotkey. In addition, the screensaver could be disabled when there is a high CPU load to prevent CPU cycles from being used up by the screensave.
TCPView
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/tcpview.shtml)
TCPView gives a detailed listing of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows NT, 2000 and XP TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows.
UnicEdit
Website (
http://heiner-eichmann.de/software/u...t/unicedit.htm)
UnicEdit is a Notepad-replacement with fantastic Unicode support. It converts between UTF-8, UTF-16, UCS-2, UCS-4, as well as ANSI or multibyte with various code pages. In addition, it shows you the full Unicode name of each character in the status line. No other tool I have come across offers you the same level of flexibility for performing code conversion!
VirtualDrives
Website (
http://www.appcontrols.com/software/virtualdrives.html)
Virtual Drives Manager is a tool for defining virtual drives in your filesystem. Virtual drives are symbolic links that points to existing directories on your filesystem. This is essentially a graphical version of subst.exe.
VNC Viewer
Website (
http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi)
VNC Viewer enables you to remote control any machine running VNC Server.
WHD
Website (
http://www.smalleranimals.com/index_free.htm)
WHD allows you to view and edit the contents of any file in hex or decimal.
Wild Replace
Website (
http://www.cylog.org/utils_6.asp)
WildReplace is a search and replace tool that lets you search for files on your disks and presents the results in a folder tree. You can search for files with special attributes (Read-Only, System, Archive, etc.), or files that contain a matching phrase (works with both Text and Binary files). WildReplace can also replace text on files, create backups of modified files, delete files that match your search criteria or move all matching files to a new location while preserving the same folder structure.
XVI32
Website (
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delph...2.htm#download)
XVI32 is a hex editor with large file capability, built-in scripting, data inspector, fast search-and-replace function and many other features specific to manipulating files in hex mode.
Multimedia
FastStone Image Viewer
Website (
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm)
FastStone Image Viewer is an image browser, viewer, editor and converter that supports resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments, watermarks, EXIF support, lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image frames, scanner support, histogram and more. It also includes a built-in slideshow with 60 transitional effects. It supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.
FSResizer
Website (
http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm)
FastStone Photo Resizer is a batch image converter/resizer that enables users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to many images at one go.
Fusion Media Player
Website (
http://www.fusionmedia.org/index.php)
Fusion is a small media player that plays DVD, DIVX, XVID, MPEG, WMV, MP3, WMA, WAV or MID, with skin and visualization plugin support. It also supports recording of streaming content directly to the harddisk.
GSpot
Website (
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/screenshots.html)
Simply drag-and-drop any AVI file to the GSpot window, and GSpot will determine which audio and video codecs are required to play the file, as well as whether these codecs are installed on your system.
IrfanView
Website (
http://www.irfanview.com/)
IrfanView is a image viewer with support for a large number of image, audio and video formats, including animated GIF, multi-page TIFF and multiple ICO files. It also supports creation of panaroma images, editing of multi-page TIFF files, as well as lossless JPEG rotation.
Media Player Classic
Website (
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/)
Media Player Classic looks like Windows Media Player V6.x, but it is not a me-too application. Beneath its classic look lies an extremely powerful media player. You can configure keyboard commands, configure/reorder/disable codecs/filters etc. And it is one of those rare media players that provides native support for Unicode, so you will be able to load music or video files with Japanese, Chinese or Korean filenames easily, and view them in the playlist.
mp4UI
Website (
http://mp4ui.sourceforge.net/)
mp4UI is a utility for viewing and creating MP4 files. MP4 files are ISO compliant MPEG-4 streams with AAC audio. You are able to edit file/track properties and metadata, as well as import/export individual audio/video tracks.
Pixia
Website (
http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/)
Pixia is a powerful graphics editor with a unique user interface. When learning Pixia, it's easier to discard everything you know about Photoshop or Paintshop, and start from scratch with the tutorials and help files.
SharpControl
Website (
http://www.retsok.nl/pages/downloads.php)
SharpControl sharpens images using an algorithm that is different from most mainstream graphics applications. It reads and writes JPEG and uncompressed TIFF files. It also allows batch processing of images.
SilentNight MP3
Website (
http://www.silentnight2004.com/Download.html)
SilentNight MP3/CD Player is a multimedia player that supports playback of the following filetypes: .mp3, .ogg, .wav, .wma, .mo3, .xm, .mod, .s3m, .it, .mtm, .mp2, .mp1, audio CD, and Internet radio streams. There is also a CD-ripper that ripps files directly to MP3 format, convertions between MP3-WAV, WAV-MP3. You can also edit MP3 tags with the built-in tag editor, and record Internet radio streams, or from any other input line supported by your soundcard. The player has an equalizer, and you can also regulate pitch, samplerate, tempo, flanger, echo, rotate, and adjust CD-ROM speed.
STOIK Capturer
Website (
http://www.stoik.com/)
Stoik Capturer captures video from your DV camcorder directly to AVI or WMV. It is able to split capture file automatically by size. You can also output DV AVI to your DV camcorder with the help of this program.
VirtualDub
Website (
http://virtualdub.org/)
VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility. It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is great for video capture and transcoding via third-party video codecs. It can also read MPEG-1 video files.
VLC
Website (
http://www.videolan.org)
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
WinDV
Website (
http://windv.mourek.cz/)
WinDV is a small utility for capturing videos from DV device (camcorder) into AVI-files and for recording AVI-files into DV device via FireWire (IEEE 1394) interface. Capturing is very reliable thanks to use of large buffer queue. Timestamps recorded on DV tape by camcorder can be used to automatically split captured video into multiple files. During transmitting to DV, several AVI-files can be joined together to form final video recording.
winLAME
Website (
http://winlame.sourceforge.net/download.php)
winLAME is an encoder for WAV, MP3 and OGG. It lets you set up the encoding process with an easy-to-use wizard-style user interface, with support for batch processing of multiple audio files.
XnView
Website (
http://www.xnview.com/)
XnView is an image viewer and converter that supports more than 400 graphics format. It has tons of options you can tweak. My favorite is to enable caching so that thumbnails are cached in a temp folder of my choice (unlike some image viewers that insist on writing the cache file to every image folder that you access).
Security
CyberShredder
Website (
http://www.cylog.org/utils_9.asp)
CyberShredder erases confidential files from your computer permanently. Normal file deletion will remove a file's directory entry and allocation table information. The actual disk clusters that contained the file's data remains intact on your hard disk and can be recovered later. CyberShredder overwrites the space occupied from a file with random data and erases the file, so an unerase utility will never be able to recover it. It has three different methods of deleting files including the NSA approved seven-pass file deletion method.
eXpress CheckSum Calculator
Website (
http://www.irnis.net/free.shtml)
eXpress CheckSum Calculator is great for verifying the integrity of files downloaded from the Internet. Similar utilities install new shell menus and/or tabs, which I dislike, because experience have shown that badly written shell utilities will make Windows Explorer less stable. Why sacrifice system stability when you can use small, simple utilities like these instead?
KeePass
Website (
http://keepass.sourceforge.net/)
KeePass is a password manager that helps you manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master *** or a ***-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).
Omziff
Website (
http://www.xtort.net/xtort/omziff.php)
Omziff is an encryption utility that uses various cryptographic algorithms to encrypt and decrypt textual files. These algorithms include: Blowfish, Cast128, Gost, IDEA, Misty1, Rijndael, and Twofish. It also generates random passwords, splits files, and offers simple file shredding.
privyCrypt
Website (
http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~vlchung/code/privyCrypt/)
privyCrypt is a small program that is designed for encrypting email before transmission across networks. It relies on a shared private *** for encryption/decryption.
Rootkit Revealer
Website (
http://www.sysinternals.com/utilitie...trevealer.html)
RootkitRevealer is a rootkit detection utility. It detects registry and filesystem API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
TrueCrypt
Website (
http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/)
TrueCrypt creates virtual encrypted disks within a file and mount it as a real disk. It can also encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB memory stick, floppy disk, etc. It supports a full range of encryption algorithms, including AES-256, Blowfish (448-bit key), CAST5, Serpent (256-bit key), Triple DES, and Twofish (256-bit key).