"Must have" - tools and programs

  • Hey - turns out IRC is out and something a little more modern has taken it's place... A little thing called Discord!

    Join our community @ https://discord.gg/JuaSzXBZrk for a pick-up game, or just to rekindle with fellow community members.

Not a tool but something you might want to do to speed up your Windows if you have a lot of files or folders. I found this the other day and it's amazing the difference in how quickly things open, load, etc.

Open My Computer, right-click on your main drive (ie. C:), go to Properties, uncheck 'Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching' box. If it comes up with an options window about files and folders, click the 'Apply changes to C:, subfolders and files' one, click OK, then click Cancel when it starts going through the files. The whole Properties window should close, and when you go back into it the Indexing Service box will be unchecked.

Or just Run > serrvices.msc, find Indexing Service in the list, Stop it and Disable it.
 
Useless said:
Not a tool but something you might want to do to speed up your Windows if you have a lot of files or folders. I found this the other day and it's amazing the difference in how quickly things open, load, etc.

Open My Computer, right-click on your main drive (ie. C:), go to Properties, uncheck 'Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching' box. If it comes up with an options window about files and folders, click the 'Apply changes to C:, subfolders and files' one, click OK, then click Cancel when it starts going through the files. The whole Properties window should close, and when you go back into it the Indexing Service box will be unchecked.

Or just Run > serrvices.msc, find Indexing Service in the list, Stop it and Disable it.
Click to expand...

and before suggesting such stuff could you explain what it does? and why we wouldmost likely not need it!!?
 
File indexing basically gathers information about files on your PC, so that when you use the search function you can use key words in addition to the normal filename/filetype
 
X-Bomb said:
and before suggesting such stuff could you explain what it does? and why we wouldmost likely not need it!!?
Click to expand...

It speeds up Explorer because Windows isn't being asked to gather lots of info about files which it might never need to access anyway. This takes greater effect the more files and folders there are to look through. Try it and you'll see what I mean when it comes to navigating among folders.

Sry, I should have actually mentioned what it does, but trust XB to put me right in his usual charmless way :clap:

All my posts are for XP only (afaik) as I would hope you would perceive me as someone not dumb enough to use Vista.
 
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http://www.peerblock.com/
PeerBlock lets you control who your computer "talks to" on the Internet. By selecting appropriate lists of "known bad" computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been "hacked", even entire countries! They can't get in to your computer, and your computer won't try to send them anything either.
Click to expand...
 
Chatzilla ChatZilla works on Mozilla Firefox 3.5.6 as Add-on with only 338KB.
Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients

Text used from ChatZilla!:
ChatZilla is a clean, easy to use and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client, built on the Mozilla platform, which provides all the usual features: multiple servers, a built-in list of standard networks, easy searching and sorting of available channels, logging, and DCC chat and file transfers, plus easy customization with JavaScript plug-ins and CSS styling.

http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/
Install ChatZilla 0.9.86 from Add-ons

(It's only 338KB.)

ChatZilla works on Mozilla Firefox 3.5.6.

Example Global settings: Startup: Auto-connect URLs: irc://irc.utassault.net/

Example for Network irc.utassault.net:

nick ..........
msg nickserv identify ..........
join #utassault

Other help for channels (ban list, topic).

/ban
/topic (can be used out of the header to modify it)
 
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Okay, one addon for ffx:

FireFTP:
... an FTP client for Firefox which provides easy access to FTP servers.
Apart from the obvious cool and comfy integration into ffx there is one scenario, where this addon might be useful: If you don't have admin rights on any windows/linux PC at work/uni but still want to use the nice bandwidth there :D I did that "from time to time" :D
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/684
 
And even better:

JDownloader:
JDownloader is open source, platform independent and written completely in Java. It simplifies downloading files from One-Click-Hosters like Rapidshare.com or Megaupload.com - not only for users with a premium account but also for users who don't pay. It offers downloading in multiple parallel streams,
(lets say, it can do something about most captchas, too),
automated file extraction/joining and much more. Of course, JDownloader is absolutely free of charge. Additionally, many "link encryption" sites are supported - so you just paste the "encrypted" links and JD does the rest. JDownloader can import CCF, RSDF and the new DLC files.
Click to expand...
It absolutely rocks. Downloads from youtube, etc as well. I don't even know what it cannot download :D Just copy any number of links to the clipboard and it will do mostly the rest for you. It is written in Java, so it doesn't break performance records, but it updates itself etc all the time, while still not installing anything to your system (I'd call it a portable app)... just great.

www.jdownloader.org (there is a .com domain, too, but I'd only use this one)
 
Hardcore said:
And even better:

JDownloader:
It absolutely rocks. Downloads from youtube, etc as well. I don't even know what it cannot download :D Just copy any number of links to the clipboard and it will do mostly the rest for you. It is written in Java, so it doesn't break performance records, but it updates itself etc all the time, while still not installing anything to your system (I'd call it a portable app)... just great.

www.jdownloader.org (there is a .com domain, too, but I'd only use this one)
Click to expand...

jd >cryptload :)
 
:kiss: ^



URL shorteners are cool. having used the tinyurl addon for firefox before, i can recommend this addon now:

Shorten URL 0.3.6 - https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/11423
Shorten long URL from context menu or toolbar button with your selected URL shortener and display the result in location bar. Supports more than 100 URL shorteners.







but: actually i haven't used it so far :D (but i am very sure it does a good job, just as the tinyurl addon did).

reason: tinyurl.com and bit.ly do sometimes have trouble with "#" and other characters in URLs.

so: i use snipurl.com quite a lot. and on their site, there is this bookmarklet at the very bottom. drag it to your bookmarks toolbar and then - whenever you are on a site, whose URL you want to shorten, just click it. you will receive a popup with the shortened url and additional info. plus: snipurl.com does not mess up complicated URLs.

-> the only downside is, that it does not copy the url to your clipboard for you automatically, but maybe Shorten URL 0.3.6 can do that (the tinyurl addon can). [edit]yes, Shorten URL 0.3.6 does it, too. just tested it and it works fine[/edit]
 
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There used to be a Firefox addon called Linky, but it's not supported in FF3 somehow. Anyway, here is a better version:

MultiLinks

All this addon does is allow you to manipulate multiple links at the same time. Say you have a bunch of links and you want to open them all in separate tabs or windows, or just copy all the links to the clipboard. You can either go through them one at a time, right-clicking and choosing an action, or you can just use this addon.

Just right-click and drag over all the links you want to open / copy, and release the mouse, and it does the rest for you. So useful for opening a bunch of tabs or for adding multiple links to a download manager :coolfip:
 
not a prog, but useful anyway (win xp users):

Get rid of the nag screen prompting you to restart your computer after installing windows updates every 10 minutes.


1. Click Start > Run (Win + R) to open the Run window.
2. In the Run window type gpedit.msc to open the Group Policy.
3. On the left pane, Click Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.
4. On the right pane, double click on "Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations".
5. Now you can either choose Disabled to disable the restart prompt completely or choose Enabled and change the amount of time windows will wait to re-prompt you for restarting (the default value is 10 minutes), you can enter the value that you prefer (in minutes) I recommend 180 (3 hours) specially if you usually use hibernate instead of shut down.
6. Click Ok and close the Group Policy.

http://www.tutorialsroom.com/tutorials/winnet/disable_restart_prompt.html
 

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I'm pretty sure I posted that one once ^ and you were one of the people who thanked me in the thread :rolleyes: Still good though.

Thanks to seas for this one:

Super F4

Force closes any full screen application which is running but which has frozen. Useful if a game hangs but you can't alt-tab out of it.

And another nice util I found the other day:

Unlocker

Force closes processes or deletes files and folders which Windows says are in use but aren't. Process Explorer can do similar things but Unlocker just adds an option in the right-click context menu to do things quickly.
 
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Hi :wave:

I used to have (on Windows XP) a way to right click a file and rename it to uppercase or lowercase instantly (could have been power toys for windows xp or something not really sure!)

I recently installed Windows 7 and have forgotten which tool it was that did this

Anyone have any idea????

Have googled a bit and cant find anything that works on windows 7 on the right click menu
 
Bart said:
AntiVirus
Avira Antivir - including real time protection. >99% detection rate
AVG Antivirus - including real time protection
Rising Antivirus - including real time protection, Emailcheck, Office check, and much much more

AntiSpyware / AntiSpam
AD-Aware SE Personal - Finds Spyware on your computer
Spybot Search & Destroy - Finds Spyware on your computer and can immunize your system
Hijackthis - search and find any evil services running on your machine.
Spampal - free mail classification software. The latest betas use a transparent proxy to classify your incoming mail

Software Firewalls:
Kerio Software Firewall

Analysing / Systemtools
ProcessExplorer - replacement for taskmanager
PRIO - replacement/addon for taskmanager
TCPView - sees all active Connections and their status
AIDA32 - Useful for reporting entire system info to html (hardware, drivers, software etc)
CoreTemp - Shows the temperatur of cpu cores
CPU-Z - Shows many information about CPU, Mainboard and RAM
GPU-Z - Shows many information about the graphiccard
WinUpdatelist - Shows every Windowsupdate. Also lists the place and more information about any selected update
SiSoft Sandra - Informating, testing and benchmarking tool

Harddisks
HDTune - Benchmark your Harddisk and see SMART attributes
DiskCheckUp - monitor the SMART attributes of your harddisk
Partition Magic - split your harddisk into partitions
JDiskReport - Statistics about your folders and files

Tweaking / optimizing utilities
XP-Antispy - disables Windows spy and other annoying functions (like ballon tips, etc)
CCleaner - tidy up your registry
Regseeker - tidy up your registry
StartupCPL - Disable Startup programs and config registrykeys easier
CD-Bremse - Slowdown your CD/DVD spinning speed = makes your optical drives more silent
Autohotkey - create your own windows hotkeys and bind them

Browser
Mozilla Firefox
Opera - some say it's saver than Firefox
Toolbarcop - remove unwanted toolbands / toolicons and addons

Video / Audio / Picture / Media
VLC-Player -it is able to play almost every mediafile (almost all codecs are included).
Subtitle Workshop - freeware subtitle editing tool
ViPlay3 - Mediaplayer
SUPER - universal mediaplayer
DVD Flick - powerful DVD Authoring tool
VirtualDub - for video editing
SubEdit Player - Movieplayer and Subtitle editor
IrfanView - batch-convert, batch-resize or just simply view all kind of images
Paint.NET - easy and comfortable photo-editor (even possible to add plugins)
Orbit Downloader - grab all sorts of streaming videos from the internet
ConvertXtoDVD - convert your movie files to a compatible DVD playable on any home DVD player
CBMC Media Center - free Media Center for Win/Mac/Linux


Burning / Imaging / Mounting
Deamon-Tools - virtual drives. You can mount images (*.img, *.iso, etc) to driveletters
burrrn - small burn program
ImgBurn - easily burn images on media or create images out of media.

Voice communication
Teamspeak Overlay - Addon for teamspeak with it you can see who's speaking

Misc / other programs
7zip - open source file archiver. It can handle RARs, ZIPs and more
Foxit Reader - can show PDF-documents. Faster than any other PDF-viewer with the function to convert text.
cutepdf - free pdf converter. Save your documents into PDF
LuckiDIPS - Save the position of your icons on your desktops
UltraVNC - remote desktop
WinSnap - make and edit screenshots and configure the way how they are made
Password utilities - Recover lost/forgotten passwords
Ophcrack - Windows password cracker
DAMN-NFO-Viewer - let you view NFO files properly
UnFREEze - create own animated GIF-files
Metapad - replacement for MS notepad
Notepad++ - replacement for MS notepad
Notebook Hardware Control - control the hardware and system power management, increasy battery lifetime
WinSCP. Data transfer (FTP; SFTP, SCP, SSH and even a text editor)
Click to expand...

The 38years (2021) old myslef talking to my 23 years (2006) old myself:
BUY BITCOIN IN 3 YEARS. SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY AT IT.
 
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