Tech Tutor Mark

PC Maintenance & Internet Security Hard Drive Cleaners: Ways to Clean Up Your Hard Drive, Remove Excess Clutter & Junk Files CCLeaner ( www.ccleaner.com ): This free utility cleans up Internet temporary files, history, cookies, it is a registry cleaner, it removes temporary files from Windows and many other applications, as well as emptying your recycle bin and much more. Windows Disk Cleaner : This utility is built into every version of Windows. To find it, double-click on “My Computer,” then right-click on your “C” drive and choose Properties. Then, click on the Disk Cleanup button. Windows Clean-Up : ( www.stevengould.org ): The famous toilet flush sound initiates this rather famous free utility from programmer Steven Gould. It does pretty much the same things as CCLeaner above, but removes even more, and can be dangerous to use for that reason. Anti-Malware (includes Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware) Remove Bots -- Try Trend MicroTM RUBotted (Beta) Google Pack – A Google se...

Where Are Those Big Files Hiding? Clean Up Your Hard Drive http://windirstat.info That question pretty much says it all. Where are those space hogs on your computer? There has to be a chunk of space that is being used by something, something which can probably be deleted...but where is it and what is it? Here is a utility that will tell you. WinDirStat is short for Windows Directory Statistics. Amazingly, it runs on Windows 95 all the way up through Vista. There isn't much of anything in the computer world that can make that claim anymore. On the Web site above, you will find several screenshots that show you what WinDirStat looks like. I have two of them presented here. But what does it do exactly? First, it reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views: The Directory List , which resembles the tree view of Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size, t he TreeMap , which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away, and th...

91 Utilities to Supercharge Windows http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2279207,00.asp If you are a Windows Utilities collector like I am, or if you just like to experiment with different free software, this article is for you . PC Magazine rolled out this great collection in March 2008 and it is one that I have wanted to feature ever since then. About once a month I do a post that features a collection of great utilities, and this is a very large one indeed. Beginning with the Hall of Fame , and one of my favorite photo utilities (IrfanView) and including many pay utilities as well as freebies, this is one of the more comprehensive collections of software for your computer. Since not everything in this article is free, you should pay close attention to the price listed in very small text next to the Web site link - at the top of each featured program. These utilities are carefully organized into categories, as they should be, such as Appearance (which includes such things as Taskbar...

Dial-a-Fix: Knocks out Serious Windows Problems Dial-a-fix is a collection of "known fixes" that have been compiled over the past year that really knock out some serious Windows problems, all with one or two clicks. It tackles issues with SSL/Cryptography, Windows Update, Microsoft Installer, and many miscellaneous shell problems. Most of the fixes it uses are found in various Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, and articles written by Microsoft MVPs. When you see a list of DLLs that need to be registered using REGSVR32.EXE, chances are they are already listed in Dial-a-fix. Mouse-over a checkbox or button to obtain more information about what will be executed, or what DLLs will be registered. A word of caution (disclaimer) here. This collection of fixes could also be thought of as an oxymoron in the hands of a non-geek. Or, let's just say that it could do more harm than good if you don't like to tamper with your computer's settings, and don't find tweaking c...

Remove Trialware and Other Annoying PC Crap Most people only get one new computer every 4-6 years. I, on the other hand, set up new computers almost every day. So, having the convenience of a utility that detects the "crap" (or unnecessary programs) is essential. For instance, many new computers from the big manufacturers like Sony, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, Dell, etc. ship with annoying 30-90-day trial applications, games, and other programs that simply bog down the machine and make it run slower than it would without them. Many people disregard these programs, but they simply add to the fat, and eventually contribute to slowing down that new computer very quickly. Also, with a trial version of a program like Norton Internet Security, the service provided by the application is only good for a limited time. In the case of Norton, only 60-90 days. Wouldn't it be nice to have a utility that detected this junk, commonly known as "bloatware"? Well, now there is. The PC De...

Storing Your Web Passwords the Free Way with KeePass People often ask me if there is a quick and easy way to save their online passwords so that they don't forget them. Right now, when more and more sites require passwords to access them, it is especially important to do two things: 1) Pick a password that is not easy to guess and, 2) Make sure you don't forget the password(s) that you chose. Also, with more and more sites having security rules, they are making it more and more difficult for us to remember passwords. Take Adobe.com for instance. I couldn't believe how many safeguards and hoops you had to jump through to just to create a password to enter their site. Many corporations, for instance, require you to change your password every 60-90 days. It's no wonder that there is great software out there to help us manage our passwords. The best one, in my opinion, is RoboForm . But, RoboForm also has a stipulation in its license. You can use it free, as long as you onl...

Open New Web Pages to the Max IE New Window Maximizer is a utility that could have been grouped with the other great utilities or Power Tools listed at various points in this blog, but it is too good, too essential not to devote an entire post to it. If you spend any time on the Web using Internet Explorer, you know how irritating it is to click on links in Web sites, only to have these links open up in a new window. The new window is not the problem, but the fact that they open up in a newer, smaller window. Sure, you could click on the "Maximize" square in the top right corner of the window, or, if you dare, you could double-click on the Title Bar of the new window - to make it maximized. But having to do that over and over and over for every site you go to and every link you click on gets tedious. Wouldn't it be nice if every link you clicked on just automatically opened maximized, taking up the whole screen, requiring you to do nothing but look at the page? That wou...

Firetrust's MailWasher Free A Unique Spam Blocker As you can see from the screenshot at the left, Firetrust MailWasher Free Edition contains advertising at the top right corner of the interface. This is one of the main drawbacks in the free version of this wildly popular Spam-blocking utility. Like many free versions of products that also have a Pro (pay) version, you are nagged to purchase the more powerful, better version, which is not a bad idea in this case. MailWasher Pro is a more fully-functional version of this anti-spam option. But first, before you decide whether or not to go with this as your Spam-killing choice, let's look at how MailWasher handles Spam. What makes this utility unique is that it catches the Spam before it ever reaches your machine. MailWasher doesn't remove it from your PC, rather it removes spam from your mail server before you download it to your PC. This may seem strange, but it makes a lot of sense. It means that when you download your E-ma...

A Serious List of Software Tools I have been an avid list-maker since I was little kid. Lists of favorite actors, actresses, movies, songs, TV shows, etc. The list goes on. Maybe it stems from borderline OCD. I just think it's fun. Well, Jane Hart and the Center for Learning and Performance Technologies (out of the UK) has compiled a list from the contributions of 155 learning professionals (from both education and workplace learning) who shared their top 10 Tools for Learning, both for their own personal learning/productivity, and for creating learning solutions for others. Now, here is the final result. Drum roll, please. The Top 100 Tools for Learning : http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html The Top 10 in More Detail : http://tinyurl.com/3gnmze The Spring 2008 PDF file is now available. You can download it here . The point of this amazing list of software tools is that these people took it very seriously. The analysis is incredible. Just take a look at how they broke ...

12 Great Free Apps from Ou Lately I have been on a free software kick. It's kind of a hobby of mine. Finding what I consider to be essential applications that help make life easier as a Windows user. Just recently I stumbled across a blog entry on ZDNet by George Ou, their former Technical Director. Interestingly, he lost his job on March 26th due to corporate restructuring. As a testament to his wisdom, he listed 12 essential Windows apps that he includes on every system he builds, and all of them are free. I couldn't agree more. Here is that complete article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=989 Included in his list (along with excellent screen shots) are: uTorrent Skype Paint.NET Infra recorder Dr. Divx FastStone Photo Resizer K-Lite Mega Codec Pack IZArc CCleaner Autoruns Process Explorer AVG Antivirus Free Edition If you just want to jump through George's image gallery for each app, go to this site . I can honestly say that I have used 8 out of 12 of these, and I can vouc...

The Fastest Defragger on the Planet I have experimented with other disk defragmentation utilities besides the one included with Windows XP. I ended up going with Diskeeper and was pretty happy with it through versions 9 and 10. Not that it is a bad product. It was certainly better at defragging my hard drive than anything included with Windows. It had a better, cleaner interface, and it worked more quickly. However, it still wasn't as quick as I would have hoped for. And, of course, being the frugal person that I am, I hated having to shell out the money each year (upgrade or otherwise) to accomplish a task that Windows should do a better job of by itself. But, in case you're interested, Diskeeper 2008 runs $29.95 for the Home version and $49.95 for the Professional version. Only the Pro version works with Windows Vista Business and Vista Enterprise. What I wanted was a free defragmentation program that does this unpleasant task better than Windows, faster, and for free. Bring...

Find Out What's Inside Your Computer without Opening the Case In the past, I have used a popular little utility called Belarc Advisor , which will tell you an amazing amount of information about your computer, including all of the installed software, serial numbers, amount of memory, etc. However, there is still a lot of information that Belarc does not report. For this missing information, I recommend that you also use CPU-Z . With CPU-Z, you can find out just about anything about your computer, and particularly that elusive statistical information like temperature, motherboard serial number, very specific memory information, and much more. You will learn important items like your processor name and vendor, processor package, internal and external clocks, clock multiplier, partial overclock detection, and processor features including supported instructions sets. CPU-Z is available from http://www.cpuid.com/ and this site is where you can find many other useful utilities like HWMo...

Media-Convert.com Computer users need to convert files for various reasons. For example, believe it or not, most brand new PCs only come with a trial version of Microsoft Office. After about 90 days, applications like Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Publisher no longer work, and the files created in these programs will no longer open. This makes PC buyers very upset, and they refuse to shell out the money for a licensed version of Office. So they often resort to using an office suite like Corel WordPerfect Office or Microsoft Works, which may be included for free on their new PC. But what about all of those files they created in the trial version of Microsoft Office? Well, they probably won't open in Works or Word Perfect. And what about those video clips you downloaded, or photos that you edited in Photoshop on your friend's computer? What a pain it would be to find that they don't open no matter what you do. Here is a quick solution. A new resource called Media-Convert . In...

ZoomIt is a free utility that is especially great for tech teachers, trainers or anyone who presents to others from a computer desktop. Microsoft makes this tool available from their Windows Sysinternals site. Sysinternals utilities help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. ZoomIt was updated this month to version 1.8, and this update to the popular screen magnifier and annotation presentation tool adds support for undo while drawing, and it also allows for resizable text fonts. I don't know how I managed without ZoomIt. Here is a direct link to the ZoomIt site . Click on the thumbnail image at the left for a blow-up of the features and keyboard shortcuts that make them happen. What's nice about ZoomIt is that you don't really have to install it. Just download the Zip file once, then extract it to your desktop, thumb drive or network drive. When you want to present something to a group, just double-click on the folder and launch Zo...