Category Archives: Utilities
Review: NetDrive
NetDrive is YAPOTILTL (yet another piece of technology I’d love to love). That’s another way of saying that it is a grand idea but the implementation is severely lacking.
FrontPage was always the app to love to hate. Yet, it had one feature that, if it worked correctly, sometimes made it worthwhile: It could sync directories between the local file system and the server’s. Unfortunately, it too didn’t work very well, and it often timed out while doing updates in either direction. Even worse, its successor, Expression Web, is just as bad at this.
However, I love FreeFileSync. I also love FileZilla, but the honest truth is that FileZilla falls flat when it comes to trying to sync with FTP directories. FreeFileSync, however, does not do FTP. This isn’t so bad when you are talking a handful of files, but if you really want a backup of the files on your server, you need to know quickly which are updated and which are not. Visual presentations are fine for some things, but not when you need a real snapshot of your server locally.
Review: Customizations With the Ultimate Windows Customizer
Tweaks and such are nice. I’ve written before about branding and login screen customizations. However, in looking at all the tools and such, I came across The Ultimate Windows Customizer., which claims to not only modify the logon screen, but allows you to change context menus, the start orb, size and look of the taskbar icons and much more than I can honestly fit into a short review.
The setup went smoothly. There didn’t seem to be any crapware installed with it.
Screen Tweaker Swaps Windows 7 Logon Screen – How-To Geek
Yet Another login/logon/Welcome Screen tweaker:
Screen Tweaker Swaps Windows 7 Logon Screen – How-To Geek.
I’m thinking it is time to start a list of these or something!
Geek Friday & Review: WinAudit
Well, I like lists and checklists and what-not, but it is sometimes difficult to keep track of where you started in order to know where you are going. There are tools that help, like Secunia Online Software Inspector, which is nice for check for out of date software. It is especially nice because it will even catch those pesky out of date Flash OCX files that don’t show up in Add/Remove Programs.
However, it really would help to have a list of programs, and even a list of devices, just to get an idea of what you are starting with. There are tons of programs out there that do this, but they are expensive for the most part. I just wanted something to list the program and the version – nothing fancy. In addition, I want to be able to carry it on a memory stick (aka thumb drive, flash drive, etc.) and not have to actually install it.
Well, it turns out that WinAudit fits this bill quite nicely. Not only that, but it is free. For that price, all I expected was that it would produce a text output that I could print out and cross items off as I go. However, while it will produce a text report, it can also create a comma separated file (CSV) to import into Excel or an HTML to bring up in a web browser.
It is a nice, down-and-dirty program that cuts to the chase. It reminds me a lot of how software used to be written back in the 640k days. If you want bells and whistles, then this isn’t the program for you, but if you just want something quick and easy to use, then give it a whirl.
Between these two utilities, WinAudit and Secunia OSI, it should be easy to keep your PC clean and up to date. Don’t forget that Secunia also has a Personal Software Inspector that runs on your own machine and provides you a more thorough inspection.
Geek Friday: User-Friendly Application for Ubuntu Grub Settings
I previously covered a little bit about editing the grub boot program for Ubuntu systems in “Windows XP Recovery Partition 4: Install Clonezilla”. That’s all fine and well if you can remember where the files are and aren’t in the habit of forgetting to run update-grub2. You would think there would be a program for this, right?
Well, it turns out there is! The How-To Geek site did an article on “How To Easily Change Your Dual-Booting PC’s Default OS” in which they use StartUp-Manager to manipulate the grub menu to select time-out, default OS and other options. The article covers the basics quite well, but the program documentation also covers removing options for recovery mode and memtest86+. Sounds like the tool for me! I’ll have to try this out next time I find a need to play with grub, which admittedly isn’t every day.
Capturing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)
The default on many PCs, particularly those that come from the big manufacturers, is to reboot after a blue screen of death (BSOD), the wonderful blue screen with white letters that greets you with STOP error codes and a lot of geek-talk. I’ve seen some computers that crash and restart so fast that sometimes the user isn’t even aware of the blue screen in between! This can end up in an endless cycle of reboot, crash and reboot. Frustrating!
There are various ways to break this cycle. Many BSODs occur pretty shortly after startup or after login fairly consistently. Pressing [F8] and choosing “Disable automatic restart…” is perhaps the easiest way for consistent BSODs.
However, it can be hit or miss as to when some events cause the blue screen, so you might get it up and running without a blue screen and still not know what is going on. There are utilities that read the dump files, but frankly they are usually cumbersome to use.
Well, NirSoft has an easy to use utility BlueScreenView, which will read the minidump files created during BSODs, and you can view the details of the crash. Hopefully, if it is a faulty driver, it will be listed as the possible cause, thus helping you to narrow down on the issue.
NirSoft makes some other handy utilities, some of which are used by BleepingComputer.com volunteers to assist people who post in their forums for assistance. If you use one and find it useful, I encourage you to donate so that they will keep them updated.
Ninite Releases New LifeHacker Pack
Recently, Ninite released the 2011 “Lifehacker Pack for Windows: Our List of the Best Windows Downloads”. With one installer, you can download and install all of the recommended free applications that LifeHacker recommends.
Personally, I prefer to tailor things a lot more. There are things on the list I would never use, and there are others I prefer other programs for. However, if you’re unfamiliar with many of them, this is certainly one way to get familiar with what’s available out there.
New Skype Launcher Out
I got an email this morning that there is a new version of Skype Launcher out. Skype Launcher is a handy tool that will start multiple instances of Skype with different logins.
The previous version was just OK working with Skype 4, but it worked downright poorly with Skype 5. That’s why I am recommending you check this version out, and even recommending that if you find it useful then donate to keep it going.
I hate having to add disclaimers, but I should make it clear that this is an unsolicited and unapproved endorsement. I am not connected with the author of the program other than a user of his program.
Geek Friday: Remote Desktop on iPhone?
You know you’re a geek if you want to use RDP on your iPhone to connect to a remote server/workstation. I know someone who does this on his ‘Droid, but I sort of shivered thinking about fumbling around on such a small screen.
Well, apparently, he’s not alone. Not too long ago, the How-To-Geek posted “Remote Desktop to Your Windows Computer From Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch”.
Meanwhile, I’m still pondering if it isn’t easier to just whip out my laptop and 3G stick and do it that way. Or, I suppose I could just use the new iPhad add-on.
The Best Delete Tool For Windows
Once again, I find myself disappointed. All I wanted to do was delete a directory that shouldn’t have been there. FreeFileSync somehow messed things up and kept creating FFS* directories. The problem is that they were in the My Documents directory! So, when I would go to sync My Documents … well, you get the picture.
So, just delete the directory, right? Well, it kept telling me it couldn’t. I tried rebooting. I tried safe mode. I tried to take ownership. None of that mattered.
OK, surely there is a reliable utility to do this with, right? Well, from past experience, I wasn’t expecting that much honestly, but there should be something out there for this. In the past, I have used Cygwin’s rm utility to do this. For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, it often succeeds where others have failed. On my laptop, though, I’ve long ago replaced Cygwin with the real thing (Ubuntu, in this case), so on my laptop it is fairly easy to boot into Linux and remove it. However, this particular machine has never had either.
So, I tried Delete32, UnLockIT and something else called Unlock. Guess what? None of them worked! Not a one!
OK, so I downloaded the entire default Cygwin package, installed it, booted into safe mode (just in case), and had the directory deleted in about 1/3rd of the time I had spent looking for a small Windows utility that would do the same thing.
Cygwin: Winner by a mile!
