Best Free Windows Driver Backup
WinDriversBackup is a nifty free utility that identifies all your Windows driver files and saves them to a nominated location. This utility is great for simplifying operating system reinstalls, particularly for PCs whose exact hardware configuration is not fully known or documented. Works across a network as well. Recommended.
http://www.jermar.com/wdrvbck.htm
Best Free Digital Image Utility
Irfanview is a free multimedia viewer and editor that supports a huge range of file formats. Each new version seems to add more capabilities but to me, its most powerful features are its speed and its batch processing capability. If you want to resize sets of digital images for the web or for transmission by email, Irfanview is the best free solution available. It's also a mighty fine image viewer as well. I just can't believe something this good is free.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Best Free File Comparison Utility
WinMerge is a free Windows utility that compares two files and identifies the differences. The differences can then be merged from one file into the other. This is the sort of product that is ideal when you have several different versions of a file and are not sure of how they differ. The product is geared to text files so it won't be much use to you with Word Processing or other complex formatted documents But for text reports or computer programs, WinMerge is ideal. (514KB)
http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Email Accessory
As well as my normal POP email account, I have multiple Yahoo webmail accounts. Managing the latter used to be easy until Yahoo started charging to forward webmail to my POP account. To overcome the problem, I now use a nifty free product called YahooPOPS! that allows you to collect your Yahoo webmail from within your POP email client such as Outlook or Eudora. I use Outlook and must say YahooPOPS! works seamlessly from within the program. I just press "Send/Receive" and collect all my email at the one time. One of those rare programs where you offer a silent "thanks" to the developer every time you use it. ( 3.7MB)
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Outlook Accessory
I hate opening HTML email. Despite multiple layers of protection I just know that one day some cunning new exploit is going to get me. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about PocketKnife Peek, a small free Outlook add-in that allows you to preview your HTML email as text.
http://www.xintercept.com/pkpeek.htm
BEST OF THE REST
These specialist free utilities don't fit into any particular product category but are great products that fill a real need:
Restore Missing Toolbars
Inexperienced PC users just always seem to be losing their Windows and Internet Explorer toolbars. I've never quite worked out exactly how they do it but they sure manage it somehow. Luckily, this free utility makes recovery a snack.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/ToolbarRepair.Exe
Locate Required DLLs
This free utility can be a lifesaver. It identifies all the DLL and OCX support files required to operate any Windows 32 bit executable file.
http://linos-software.com:23/Depend.html
Free NFO Viewer
Many freeware files are distributed with descriptive NFO and DIZ files as part of the distribution package. These are just plain text files so you can view them with Notepad or other text editor but often the formatting is lost. Try this tiny little viewer that's built for the job. It's free and once associated with the NFO and DIZ file types, works seamlessly, a true "install and forget" product.
http://www.damn.to/software/nfoviewer.html
Lock Down Your Icons
Sick of Windows moving your icons around on the desktop? Lock them down with this nifty free utility. (400KB)
http://www.sillysot.com/
Monitor Your User's Backup Needs
BackupWatcher is a free tool that allows LAN administrators to measure the backup requirements of network users. It does this by monitoring the file churn rate on each PC since last backup. Full reporting facilities are provided that allow problem areas to be easily identified. Quite a neat way of reducing unnecessary backups and ensuring necessary ones are actually carried out. (2.57MB)
http://bw.rippletech.com/
Free Utility Kills Instant Messaging Viruses
If you use IRC or instant messaging then you should check out SOFTWIN, a company that provides a number of totally free anti-virus utilities than scan all data transfers associated with IM products. All the utilities make use of the virus signature databases from the BitDefender Professional anti-virus product so signature file updating is simple. There are versions for MSN Messenger, NetMeeting, ICQ, mIRC, and Yahoo! Messenger.
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/instant_messaging.php
Photoshop Replacement for Nix
Oriens Enhancer is a graphics processing program similar in function to Photoshop and Paintshop. The big difference is that it's free, the others cost big bucks. But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this product can read more than 40 file formats, has filters, textures and color effects to burn and can even handle layers. If that's not enough for you, let me say that on my PC it was both fast and stable. I'm giving this one Gizmo's JCBTIF certification. (Just Can't Believe This Is
Free) (4.05MB)
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcg...id=26013&db=win
Free Utility Stops Browser Hijacking
There's a browser hijacking plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered or phantom bookmarks added to your favorites. This free monitor will let you know when something's trying to change your settings and pass control back to you. (394KB)
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/bhblaster.html
Batch Process Digital Images
ThumbNail Refinery LE is a free utility that will quickly process and resize your digital images so you can send them by email or mount them as thumbnails in a gallery. It can write all popular formats including JPG and PCX and allows control over a variety of parameters including rotation, size, color depth, sharpness, brightness and contrast. It's fast, it's stable, and it’s free. (1.55MB) Editor's note: Looks like this is now shareware. Pity.
http://www.oriens-solution.com/enhancer.asp
Hides Personal Files from the Boss
Camouflage is a free utility that will hide your personal or confidential files within another file. The neat thing is that the container file looks and works like a normal file of that format. So, by way of example, you could embed a secret message in a Word file which could be opened by anyone and appear to be just a normal Word file. The intended recipient could use their
copy of Camouflage to open the file, enter the password and extract the embedded information. This free program is not intended to provide military strength protection but rather a convenient way to sneak information past unnecessarily prying eyes. (2.65MB)
http://arxspace.com/Camouflage/
Outlook Add-in Gives Email Account Flexibility
RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for MS Outlook 2002 that allows you to designate a default email account and signature for any Outlook Folder. The program is a late beta but has proved totally stable on my Windows XP Pro PC. Yet another free utility that provides functionality that should have been included in the original product. (338K)
http://www.realpopup.it/realaccount/
Share Bookmarks between Browsers
BookMarkBridge is a free open source utility that allows you to share and synchronize your bookmarks between several browsers. I've got 3 browsers installed at the moment: IE 6, Opera 7 and Netscape 4.7. BookMarkBridge correctly identified and synchronized the first two but it couldn't cope with the old version of Netscape.(2.69MB)
http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/
The CD "read only" Problem Solved
Anyone who has restored data from a CD onto their hard drive has faced the problem that all the restored files are marked as "read only" and cannot be modified. Changing these settings in Windows is a real pain particularly if a large number of files is involved. With this free utility you can change the file settings for dozens of files or even whole folders with a single click. Actually while the product is free of charge, the developer requests your feedback. None-the-less, ReadOnly should be on every PC. (315KB)
http://www.sente.co.uk/downloads.htm (towards bottom of page)
Thank if found usefull
WinDriversBackup is a nifty free utility that identifies all your Windows driver files and saves them to a nominated location. This utility is great for simplifying operating system reinstalls, particularly for PCs whose exact hardware configuration is not fully known or documented. Works across a network as well. Recommended.
http://www.jermar.com/wdrvbck.htm
Best Free Digital Image Utility
Irfanview is a free multimedia viewer and editor that supports a huge range of file formats. Each new version seems to add more capabilities but to me, its most powerful features are its speed and its batch processing capability. If you want to resize sets of digital images for the web or for transmission by email, Irfanview is the best free solution available. It's also a mighty fine image viewer as well. I just can't believe something this good is free.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Best Free File Comparison Utility
WinMerge is a free Windows utility that compares two files and identifies the differences. The differences can then be merged from one file into the other. This is the sort of product that is ideal when you have several different versions of a file and are not sure of how they differ. The product is geared to text files so it won't be much use to you with Word Processing or other complex formatted documents But for text reports or computer programs, WinMerge is ideal. (514KB)
http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Email Accessory
As well as my normal POP email account, I have multiple Yahoo webmail accounts. Managing the latter used to be easy until Yahoo started charging to forward webmail to my POP account. To overcome the problem, I now use a nifty free product called YahooPOPS! that allows you to collect your Yahoo webmail from within your POP email client such as Outlook or Eudora. I use Outlook and must say YahooPOPS! works seamlessly from within the program. I just press "Send/Receive" and collect all my email at the one time. One of those rare programs where you offer a silent "thanks" to the developer every time you use it. ( 3.7MB)
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/
Best Free Outlook Accessory
I hate opening HTML email. Despite multiple layers of protection I just know that one day some cunning new exploit is going to get me. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about PocketKnife Peek, a small free Outlook add-in that allows you to preview your HTML email as text.
http://www.xintercept.com/pkpeek.htm
BEST OF THE REST
These specialist free utilities don't fit into any particular product category but are great products that fill a real need:
Restore Missing Toolbars
Inexperienced PC users just always seem to be losing their Windows and Internet Explorer toolbars. I've never quite worked out exactly how they do it but they sure manage it somehow. Luckily, this free utility makes recovery a snack.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/ToolbarRepair.Exe
Locate Required DLLs
This free utility can be a lifesaver. It identifies all the DLL and OCX support files required to operate any Windows 32 bit executable file.
http://linos-software.com:23/Depend.html
Free NFO Viewer
Many freeware files are distributed with descriptive NFO and DIZ files as part of the distribution package. These are just plain text files so you can view them with Notepad or other text editor but often the formatting is lost. Try this tiny little viewer that's built for the job. It's free and once associated with the NFO and DIZ file types, works seamlessly, a true "install and forget" product.
http://www.damn.to/software/nfoviewer.html
Lock Down Your Icons
Sick of Windows moving your icons around on the desktop? Lock them down with this nifty free utility. (400KB)
http://www.sillysot.com/
Monitor Your User's Backup Needs
BackupWatcher is a free tool that allows LAN administrators to measure the backup requirements of network users. It does this by monitoring the file churn rate on each PC since last backup. Full reporting facilities are provided that allow problem areas to be easily identified. Quite a neat way of reducing unnecessary backups and ensuring necessary ones are actually carried out. (2.57MB)
http://bw.rippletech.com/
Free Utility Kills Instant Messaging Viruses
If you use IRC or instant messaging then you should check out SOFTWIN, a company that provides a number of totally free anti-virus utilities than scan all data transfers associated with IM products. All the utilities make use of the virus signature databases from the BitDefender Professional anti-virus product so signature file updating is simple. There are versions for MSN Messenger, NetMeeting, ICQ, mIRC, and Yahoo! Messenger.
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/instant_messaging.php
Photoshop Replacement for Nix
Oriens Enhancer is a graphics processing program similar in function to Photoshop and Paintshop. The big difference is that it's free, the others cost big bucks. But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this product can read more than 40 file formats, has filters, textures and color effects to burn and can even handle layers. If that's not enough for you, let me say that on my PC it was both fast and stable. I'm giving this one Gizmo's JCBTIF certification. (Just Can't Believe This Is
Free) (4.05MB)
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcg...id=26013&db=win
Free Utility Stops Browser Hijacking
There's a browser hijacking plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered or phantom bookmarks added to your favorites. This free monitor will let you know when something's trying to change your settings and pass control back to you. (394KB)
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/bhblaster.html
Batch Process Digital Images
ThumbNail Refinery LE is a free utility that will quickly process and resize your digital images so you can send them by email or mount them as thumbnails in a gallery. It can write all popular formats including JPG and PCX and allows control over a variety of parameters including rotation, size, color depth, sharpness, brightness and contrast. It's fast, it's stable, and it’s free. (1.55MB) Editor's note: Looks like this is now shareware. Pity.
http://www.oriens-solution.com/enhancer.asp
Hides Personal Files from the Boss
Camouflage is a free utility that will hide your personal or confidential files within another file. The neat thing is that the container file looks and works like a normal file of that format. So, by way of example, you could embed a secret message in a Word file which could be opened by anyone and appear to be just a normal Word file. The intended recipient could use their
copy of Camouflage to open the file, enter the password and extract the embedded information. This free program is not intended to provide military strength protection but rather a convenient way to sneak information past unnecessarily prying eyes. (2.65MB)
http://arxspace.com/Camouflage/
Outlook Add-in Gives Email Account Flexibility
RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for MS Outlook 2002 that allows you to designate a default email account and signature for any Outlook Folder. The program is a late beta but has proved totally stable on my Windows XP Pro PC. Yet another free utility that provides functionality that should have been included in the original product. (338K)
http://www.realpopup.it/realaccount/
Share Bookmarks between Browsers
BookMarkBridge is a free open source utility that allows you to share and synchronize your bookmarks between several browsers. I've got 3 browsers installed at the moment: IE 6, Opera 7 and Netscape 4.7. BookMarkBridge correctly identified and synchronized the first two but it couldn't cope with the old version of Netscape.(2.69MB)
http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/
The CD "read only" Problem Solved
Anyone who has restored data from a CD onto their hard drive has faced the problem that all the restored files are marked as "read only" and cannot be modified. Changing these settings in Windows is a real pain particularly if a large number of files is involved. With this free utility you can change the file settings for dozens of files or even whole folders with a single click. Actually while the product is free of charge, the developer requests your feedback. None-the-less, ReadOnly should be on every PC. (315KB)
http://www.sente.co.uk/downloads.htm (towards bottom of page)
Thank if found usefull
