Entries tagged with utilities - Channel 10

Diagnose Hard Drive Problems With HDDScan

sarahintampa — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:27:00 GMT

Have you been hearing an ominous clicking sound coming from inside your computer? That sound could be one of your hard drives on its way to failure…or something else entirely. If you want to know for sure, a utility called HDDScan can help. This free app will scan your internal or external drives for bad blocks, test write/read/erase capabilities, read and analyze S.M.A.R.T. parameters and run S.M.A.R.T. tests, and even monitor the temperatures of the drives themselves. When complete, the reports produced can either be printed or saved for future reference. HDDScan is definitely an app worth adding to your toolkit.

(Thanks AppScout!)

WPF Disk Space Finder

sarahintampa — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:51:00 GMT

Want to know what’s eating up your disk space on your PC? In the past, we’ve shared some tools that help you analyze your disks, but now there’s a new one to try: Disk Space Finder. This new tool is sleek, running on WPF, and simple to use. While some tools present their findings in ways that only true computer geeks could love, Disk Space Finder is aimed more squarely at the average user. Instead of offering a myriad of complex options for analyzing the results of its scan, Disk Space Finder will display a pie chart on the right showing used space, and a file explorer on the left. This makes interpreting the findings very easy. However, if you want to empty a folder, you need to click the “open folder” icon and do the job yourself – no automated assistance here. There are sometimes when you just need a basic tool for the job. If that’s the case, Disk Space Finder is worth a look. [Works on 64-bit]

Automatically Find Local Printers

sarahintampa — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:04:00 GMT

Seriously cool! Recently, I read about the new Xerox Mobile Express Driver that lets you automatically detect all the available printers in your vicinity - even the ones that are non-Xerox - and then downloads and installs the appropriate drivers automatically. Keep in mind that this software won’t get you connected the office printer at your favorite wi-fi hotspot, but it will help you find printers when you plug into the corporate network of the client you’re visiting or the printers over at your friend’s house. The software is dead simple to install and use, but you will need to be connected to the internet for the installation to work. When you’re ready to print, just choose the Xerox Mobile printer that will now be in your printer list and the software scans and adds available printers. You can even assign a name to the location so you won’t have to scan and re-add printers next time you’re there. (via CNet)

Tech Pros Rejoice - Sysinternals Live Launches

sarahintampa — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:30:00 GMT

Anyone who has ever worked in I.T. knows the name Mark Russinovich (and might even have a little alter set up in his honor). Thanks to his toolset dubbed Sysinternals, I.T. Pros and other tech enthusiasts have had access to a large number of utilities for managing, troubleshooting, and diagnosing Windows systems and applications. But like many I.T. tools, Sysinternals utilities were downloaded and run from the command-line. Well, not anymore! Now, a new service called Sysinternals Live has launched which allows you to run the commands from any internet-connected PC. The directory is simply a list of these tools as an HTML file. To use any tool, you can just click on the hyperlinked file name to run it or you can type in the UNC path \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname>. Those of you who understood what that means, you may now commence your happy dance. Everyone else, just smile and nod.

MSN Toolbar, Now with Silverlight Goodness

Larry — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:03:00 GMT

The new MSN Toolbar is out, and it now has a new crunchy Silverlight center. Features include starting a search from anywhere, adding RSS feeds to your Live.com page with a single click, and one-click access to maps for all the addresses on the page you're viewing.

For more on the MSN toolbar, check out Max's Channel 8 demo of the toolbar with Stefan Weitz.

And of course you can download the toolbar here.

PCWorld Tells You How To Do Everything Faster

sarahintampa — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:05:00 GMT

A new article over at PCWorld.com offers up 22 tips on more efficient ways to perform common tech tasks - things like reinstalling Windows, backing up your data, creating a podcast, making a web site, sharing photos, and more. Here are a few sample tips from the article:

Add a Folder to Your Favorites: Drag the beloved folder from Windows Explorer to the Start button, and from there to the Favorites menu. In Windows XP, you also have the option of opening the folder and then clicking Favorites, Add to Favorites from inside the Explorer window.

Fix a Photo's Exposure: Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery app improves on Vista's Photo Gallery program. Select Fix, Adjust Exposure In Windows Live Photo Gallery (which runs in both Vista and XP), and you'll get both Highlights and Shadows sliders and a histogram, as well as the familiar old Brightness and Contrast options.

Read the News: A number of free services can send you RSS feeds over e-mail. My favorite is SendMeRSS.com, which is so easy that you don't even have to register with the site, although doing so will make adding feeds simpler. Just enter the URL for the RSS feed you want, type in your e-mail address, and click Feed. From then on, new items will automatically appear in your inbox.

Email Large Files: My rule of thumb: Never e-mail more than 1MB of content without the express permission of the recipient. As an alternative, try YouSendIt, a brain-dead-simple take on the FTP transfer. The service is free for any file under 100MB, and individual files can be downloaded up to 100 times. You don't even have to sign up and enter a password (though the service offers additional features if you do, and even more if you pay). Just enter both e-mail addresses, point to the file, and click the Send button.

There are eighteen other great tips like those above, so you're sure to discover some tip, idea, or software app to use that you didn't already know about before.

Free Windows Mobile Remote Admin App

Larry — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:43:00 GMT

This is a cool little freeware app for your Windows Mobile phone that will let you connect with your desktop machine to your phone to control it using a window and your keyboard and mouse. You can also capture the phone screen, drag and drop files to your phone, and connect over IP (although I haven't got that one working yet on my phone.) I can confirm that even the mouse scrollwheel works on phone apps, though it doesn't appear to pass-through video display.

But this is a great little utility for doing lots of text entry on your phone, to see the phone more clearly on your computer (you can view x 200-300%), or to troubleshoot phone problems by remoting into the computer connected to it.

(Thanks, Loke)

Custom Alerts for Your Windows Mobile Device

sarahintampa — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:27:00 GMT

I just learned of some cool software called Watchflag from Jason Langridge's blog. The Watchflag software lets you create custom alerts for incoming messages as they arrive on your Windows Mobile phone. Although you can receive alerts on email in subfolders, as he points out, you can also do so much more, too.

Using rule-based notifications, you can have different mp3 sounds play based on sender or subject, have the display light up, have the phone vibrate, or have alerts repeat, and much more.

This could be really handy to help you sort through your influx of email, making sure that you don't miss that all important email from your boss or the meeting request from your department head. But personally, I like some of the examples uses that Watchflag comes up with, like a loud siren when you server goes down or a fight song for score updates from your favorite team.

The software is available for a free trial which you can download straight to your phone from m.watchflag.com.

PerfectDisk for WHS

sarahintampa — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:04:00 GMT

Today, the guys at PerfectDisk announced on their blog that a new build of PerfectDisk 2008 for Windows Home Server is now available. This new version includes full integration with the Windows Home Server console, where PerfectDisk 2008 will now have its own tab.

The PerfectDisk software defrags and optimizes disks which leads to better performance and reliability. Their "Space Restoration Technology" also helps create a large piece of contiguous free space so there is less fragmentation in the future while also improving write file access, whereas typical defragmenters only focus on read file access.

If you already have PerfectDisk installed on your WHS, you'll need to remove that first before installing the latest version. Installation instructions are here. The software for WHS is only $39.99, or you can purchase a Home Site License and get 10 licenses for your network for $99.99.

App to Hide Your Desktop Icons

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:49:00 GMT

Desktop neat freaks, here's an app for you! With the Desktop Tools app, you can hide all your desktop icons with just one click. The app resides in your system tray and when you click it, your icons are gone. Another click brings them back. The tool does the hiding/un-hiding really fast, so there is no waiting for it to "think" before it reacts. There's no flickering and no hit on the CPU, either. Despite being called "Desktop Tools", hiding and un-hiding icons is all it does. But for those of us who would rather stare at our lovely wallpaper instead (like the app's developer, who is also a photographer), this little app is a great tool. (via Appaholic)

New MSN Toolbar Beta Released

sarahintampa — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:45:00 GMT

The new MSN Toolbar Beta, powered by Silverlight, is now available for download from beta.toolbar.msn.com. The toolbar, with its Vista-like UI offers drop-down previews of MSN content in areas like News, Entertainment, Sports, Money, Autos, Shopping, Lifestyle, Health, and more. You can preview the content in these areas without having to leave the web page you're currently on thanks to drop-down windows showing the info in a preview pane. You can also get breaking news alerts and comparative search results from the toolbar - a feature that auto-populates the search box with your search query when you perform a search on another engine. This is very much like what Mahalo is doing with their sidebar tool, but without the sidebar taking up space on your screen.

Make Your PrtScr Button Actually Print the Screen

sarahintampa — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:34:00 GMT

The PrtScr button on your keyboard is a holdover from earlier command-line based operating systems, when it used to actually take the contents of the current screen memory buffer and sent it on to the printer port. These days, the button takes a screenshot of your computer's screen, something many people use to take pictures of web site content. And now, with a new, little Windows utility called Purrint, you can make the PrtScr button a bit more user friendly. After the software is installed, you can hit Print Screen and choose from a few different options about what you want to do with the screen image you just captured: Copy to Clipboard, Print, or Save to a File. Alternately, you can configure the software using the "Options" button to always do one of the three choices by default, skipping the pop-up menu altogether.

Dock Your Apps!

sarahintampa — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:27:00 GMT

As Windows users, you actually have a lot of options for implementing a dock on your Windows desktop as you can see via this post on MakeUseOf, which highlights their six favorite programs. However, one of my personal favs for implementing a dock is ObjectDock, a program which allows you to add a skinnable dock to your desktop. The newest version, which has a redesigned UI, has been sped up and now includes some useful utilities too, like the weather docklet. But it's Vista users who really luck out as we get live thumbnail previews as well as minimize and restore effects thanks to the new Windows Vista desktop graphics engine which provides hardware acceleration features. There's a free version available as well as a Plus! version for $19.95 which offers some additional effects and features.

PCWorld's 7 Office Optimizers

sarahintampa — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:50:00 GMT

As part of a PCWorld article entitled, "50 Add-Ins and Utilities That Can Improve Your PC Experience," there was a section on Office optimizers that I thought was really useful. The list included some great extras and tricks to do more with Office. Here are some highlights:

Open Office 2007 files with older office versions via the Office Compatibility Pack
Use CenoPDF to build PDFs without ever having to leave Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.
Become a meeting power user with MeetingSense, which provides an extensive dashboard for meetings, agendas, creating minutes, etc.
Organize your data with ClearContext (See? I told you so!)

For the full list, check out the article at PCWorld.

IE Surfgear

sarahintampa — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:19:00 GMT

IE Surfgear is freeware program that can help you read poorly designed web pages by fixing font and color problems. The software adds three buttons to the Internet Explorer toolbar, each of which addresses one of the following problems: tiny, un-resizable fonts, poor text colors, or poor background textures. With one click of a button, IE Surfgear will either increase the font size, remove background colors from text, or remove the textured backgrounds. If you want to see how it works, there's a demo on the product home page that you can check out first. Otherwise, you can download the program for free. (via gHacks)

Add "Send to Flickr" to Your "Send To" Menu

sarahintampa — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:01:00 GMT

Love flickr? Not only can you upload to flickr using Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can also add flickr to the right-click "Send to" menu in Windows. From Adamant Solutions comes an app called "Send to flickr," which lets you easily upload photos to flickr from Windows Explorer. The app adds "flickr" to the "Send to" list in Windows, lets you preview files while they are being uploaded, and supports uploading multiple files at once, all without need of a web browser. The best part? The software is 100% free.

Supercharge Windows Explorer

sarahintampa — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:21:00 GMT

DMEXBar is an add-on to Windows Explorer that lets you add extra features to Explorer. When you install DMEXBar, it adds a new toolbar to Explorer with features like the following: Arrange explorer windows side by side, rename multiple files at once, quick change to favorite folders, quick create directory, split files, calculate directory size, and more. One of the program's best features is the new button it adds that lets you quickly open up another instance of Windows Explorer right next to your current window. You can also add buttons that make it easier to launch a command prompt, copy or paste files, or mark them as favorites. DMEXBar works with Windows 2000 and XP. (via Download Squad)

Reveal Wireless Keys

sarahintampa — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:47:00 GMT

Forgot the WEP or WPA key to a wireless network? If you've ever connected to that network from your PC, then the key can be retrieved. The freeware utility WirelessKeyView will reveal the keys to any network you've ever connected to using Windows' Wireless Zero Configuration (not 3rd party software). You can use the software to delete keys from old networks you no longer need and copy keys to the clipboard to send or save. This could be really useful when you're setting up your new laptop or if you need to give a key to a friend so they can use your wi-fi, but you can't remember your home network's key .You can download WirelessKeyView from here.

DisplayFusion 2 Released

sarahintampa — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:00:00 GMT

You may recall an earlier post on the DisplayFusion software, which is software that allows for multi-monitor desktop wallpaper (see here for details). If you had been using the DisplayFusion program, you may want to check out the new version, DisplayFusion 2. This utility, which offers cool features like flickr integration and the ability to stretch images across desktop screens, is now available in both a free version and a paid version, and includes some of the features missing from the prior release. The Pro version now lets you change your wallpaper on a timer and has tray menu item for changing to the next random wallpaper or freezing on the current one. The Pro version also offers the ability to to background image position fine tuning, configurable window size HotKeys, configurable window moving HotKeys, and more. For only $10, the new DisplayFusion 2 is a worthy (and less expensive!) competitor to UltraMon, another program that offers similar abilities.

Tabbed Browsing in Windows Explorer

sarahintampa — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:28:00 GMT

QTTabBar is Windows Explorer add-on that allows you to navigate files and folders in a tabbed browser, just like you do in IE7. The program, written in C#, works on any Windows XP or Vista (32-bit) machine with .NET 2.0+ installed. To get started, download the latest version and install the program. Reboot and logon to Windows again. Open a folder in Explorer and right-click on the toolbar. Check 'QT TabBar'. That's it! There's also a desktop toolbar available which you can access by right-clicking on the Task Bar and checking 'QT Tab Desktop Tool' in the 'Toolbar' menu. This is so convenient, I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before now!

Get Vista's ReadyBoost on XP

sarahintampa — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:14:00 GMT

Which your copy of XP had Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits? Now you can with this new application from eBoostr. With eBoostr, you can use an additional drive (like a USB key or another hard drive) to add another layer of performance-boosting cache for your Windows XP install which lets you PC boot up much faster. The app smartly caches frequently used applications and files for maximum performance speed up and this cache file can be up to 4 GB in size. eBoostr is $29 to purchase and can be used on up to 4 PCs, but you can give it a dry run for free.

Project Dakota

sarahintampa — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:13:00 GMT

Project Dakota is an easy way to update a Windows XP PC using a CD. (Why did I discover this after I left my I.T. job??) The CD contains all the updates found on the Windows Update website, including SP2 as well as standalone programs like Adobe Reader, Spybot S&D, Firefox, Java, QuickTime, and more. The updates comes with a standalone installed that runs them in the correct order (i.e. first the pre-SP2 updates, then SP2, then the post-SP2 updates). Using a CD to install updates is much faster than having to wait for them to download. It's also handy if the computer you're building doesn't have an internet connection available. Or if, I don't know, you want your PC to be patched and secure before you go online. The Project Dakota download is 702 MB and is in an ISO format so you can burn it to a CD. (via gHacks)

Quickly Locking your PC

sarahintampa — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:01:00 GMT

I just saw a great tip on Steve Clayton's blog for quickly locking your Windows PC, so I just had to share. Instead of using "Windows + L" (not everyone can love the keyboard shortcuts, you know), Steve makes himself a little icon for his taskbar instead. Here's how:

   1. Right-click on your desktop and select "New," then"Shortcut"
   2. Paste this text in: rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
   3. Click "Next" and type a name for the shortcut (e.g. "Lock")
   4. Click "Finish"
   5. You can right-click on your new shortcut and change the icon (there is a lock icon as part of the collection in %SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll)
   6. Now drag the icon to your taskbar.

Awesome!

Prank: Re-Map the Keyboard!

sarahintampa — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:19:00 GMT

I wish I had known of this for April Fools Day! SharpKeys is a free utility that lets you remap any key on your keyboard. Essentially, SharpKeys is a registry hack that is used to make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys. After you install the software, you can tell it what each key's new function can be. Although the software can be useful (like remapping CAPS Lock to Shift or turning it off if you have fumble fingers), it seems designed for pranking! The software works on Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. The new version (2.1.1) addresses the Vista's user security so you no longer have to explicitly run SharpKeys as an Administrator as before. (via Download Squad)

Green Printing

sarahintampa — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:04:00 GMT

There's a new free edition of the popular GreenPrint software, called GreenPrint World Edition. The software, aimed at home users and non-profits, is designed to combat printing waste. The way the software works is by analyzing each page sent to a printer for extraneous content like banner ads, legal jargon, footnotes, or other unnecessary pages. These sections are highlighted in red for you to see before printing. If you want to print a page or section that has been detected as unnecessary, just double-click on it to include it in the document. You can also double-click on areas that are un-highlighted to prevent them from printing. According to the company, using GreenPrint can save you $90 per year and 1400 wasted pages. The software can also be used to create PDFs and it does reporting on the toner and paper savings you've accumulated by using it. GreenPrint World Edition is free by being ad-supported; to turn off the ads, you can upgrade to Home Premium Edition or for business use, there's an Enterprise Edition available. (via downloadsquad)