Free Software List for Vista

[shortmantuff]

Would you recommend Returnil? Does anyone else recommend it?

 

[MilesAhead]

Would you recommend Returnil? Does anyone else recommend it?

I downloaded but haven't tried it yet. I have Sandboxie on my 32 bit Windows 7 machine. On this Vista64 machine I was interested because I just have image backups. Sandboxie won't work on 64 bit. But, I'm waiting for some "early adopters" to be the guinea pigs.

Hmmmm, I've just been browsing the forum for Returnil and it looks like the new release may not be ready for prime time. I'm seeing a lot of stuff about corrupted Vista systems, uninstalls that won't complete, machines locking up with disk contents corrupted. Probably on a minority of systems but when you combine that will posts about 100% CPU usage I think I may wait for a later build that has some of these things fixed. My system is running good right now. Guess I'll rely on image backups and virus scans for the time being.

I hope they do perfect 64 bit because it would be nice to browse with a semi-bullet proof system. I mean you could boot a Linux Live CD and just surf using a browser with no HD mounted... but that seems a bit paranoid.

 

[shortmantuff]

This is WAY too advanced for me. I really have no idea what that does.

 

[MilesAhead]

This is WAY too advanced for me. I really have no idea what that does.

Not really. You just haven't heard of it that's all. A "Linux Live CD" is just a bootable CD with the Linux operating system on it, and a few programs like web browsers, email client, editor etc..

When you boot it up it does not access the hard drive on your PC. It totally runs in memory. For that reason, malware can't infect your hard drive. Of course you can't really save any downloads either. But I guess if you wanted to surf a site you thought might have some real nasty malware on it, this might be one way of making sure it can't erase your Windows folder or delete your disk partitions or other vicious pranks.

Most Linux Live CDs like this have Firefox browser on them. It's pretty much the same as surfing the web in Windows. When you start to use editors and other programs Linux gets a bit different though. It takes some getting used to.

 

[shortmantuff]

This is WAY too advanced for me. I really have no idea what that does.

Not really. You just haven't heard of it that's all. A "Linux Live CD" is just a bootable CD with the Linux operating system on it, and a few programs like web browsers, email client, editor etc..

When you boot it up it does not access the hard drive on your PC. It totally runs in memory. For that reason, malware can't infect your hard drive. Of course you can't really save any downloads either. But I guess if you wanted to surf a site you thought might have some real nasty malware on it, this might be one way of making sure it can't erase your Windows folder or delete your disk partitions or other vicious pranks.

Most Linux Live CDs like this have Firefox browser on them. It's pretty much the same as surfing the web in Windows. When you start to use editors and other programs Linux gets a bit different though. It takes some getting used to.

So the whole point behind the "Linux Live CD" is to avoid malware and such, or do you favor that over Vista?

 

[MilesAhead]

The main point of it is to try Linux without having to install it. But you can use it for isolated surfing. I come from MS Dos so I have too much invested in Dos/Windows to just quit and do Linux. If you are going to do Linux it's probably better if you do it every day on a PC that won't boot into Windows. Then you are forced to figure everything out and get everything to work the Linux way. I didn't get that deep into it compared to the real sysadmin types.

They both have their frustrations and strengths.

 

[Martee]

Hello Everyone,

Hope this software will be useful, specially for overclockers. The CPU Speed is freeware and runs as the portable application.

 

[lemur]

Can we break out a post just for 64-bit?

 

[Brink]

Can we break out a post just for 64-bit?

Hello Lemur,

If you would like to do one like the one over at Seven Forums, that would be fine.

 

[MilesAhead]

RunGroup - run programs as a group

I did a small utility that launches a main program with up to 4 sub programs. When you close the main program, it offers to kill the sub programs. It was done for a request on DonationCoder.com but it's free and seems to work on Vista64 and W7 32 bit.

I call it RunGroup. You can see more details here:

The New Freebie Thread - Page 3 - Digital Video Forums

It can be downloaded from my download page. The link is near the bottom of the page:

Faves Downloads

edit: I added a few tweaks. Latest verson 1.05 has About, Show Readme, and Donate commands in Tray Menu. Also it runs the "tray dead icon clean" routine twice with a short pause inbetween to do a better job of getting rid of the orphaned icons if one or more sub programs happen to have tray icons.

 

[Deception]

Thank you Brink for this list, I have already downloaded a couple of these!

Sean

 

[nader89]

thaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks

 

[MilesAhead]

Show HD activity using Scroll Lock LED

I found a script on AutoHotKey forum useful for those of us who have the PC under the desk or table and can't see the HD LED easily. The OP is Sean but in his script he forgot to get the keyboard LED status inside the loop where he toggles the Scroll Lock LED. The LED status was only saved at program startup. I posted a fix where I just copy the line where he gets the keyboard LED status inside the loop. You would want to download his .zip file, then substitute my fix, and compile it to .exe using the AHK compiler. Here is the link:

HDD Activity Monitoring LED

As noted in the comment in the script, in XP you may have to manually enable the monitoring, but on my Vista64 and Win7 32 bit machines, it displays the fact that monitoring is available on demand.

Note the line where the timer is set, the value of 500 milliseconds is used. It polls the status and sets the Scroll Lock LED twice per second. I experimented with changing the polling value via command line param, but on my PCs polling more than twice a second caused caps lock state to get confused. Twice per second seems to work well.

There are other HD LED emulators that show an icon in the tray but this is the first free one I've found that works with the keyboard LED. Note it's a do it yourself at your own risk script. I use HP PS/2 old fashioned keyboards. I can't say how it will work with USB or wireless keyboards.

Like anything that tweaks hardware, I'd make sure all was saved and your system is backed up before the initial trial. Just to be cautious.

edit: I added code so that only the state of Scroll Lock is saved and restored, since the user may change Caps Lock or Num Lock while the program is running.
Here's a link to the zip file so you won't have to fix the word wrap from the forum:
http://www.autohotkey.net/~MilesAhea...nitorMAmod.zip

 

[MilesAhead]

Tray 2.5

I updated my Tray utility to v. 2.5. It's a simple program to open and close the optical drive tray. It now supports up to 4 optical drives. Unfortunately at present my web server isn't letting me upload anything, but you can get the latest from Softpedia using this link:

Download Tray 2.5 - Simple utility to open and close optical drive tray. - Softpedia

edit: they just got my server back to normal. The page on my site is:

http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html


just scroll down until you see the Tray screen shot.

 

[ggraciela]

thanks for sharing
is excellent,
I learned a lot of you
I now understand more
pc

 

[vivit]

Thanks very much, it saves me much time.

 

[khansahib]

Awesome list its a great share. keep it up.

 

[MilesAhead]

Fave Folder hotkey utility

I found that very often I was opening the same target folder for drag & drop operations. I wrote a small hotkey utility in AutoHotKey so that I can move folders to this target folder directly from the source without drag & drop. Also as a convenience you may hotkey on the desktop to just open the Fave Folder. By default the target is Documents but you may change this using the Tray Icon Menu.

The idea is to move folders with large files on the same partition via a Windows directory entry reassignment. Moving to a different partition is not prevented but unless the files are small I'd use Windows Drag & Drop or some command line copy function instead.

Also the selections for hotkey move must be folders only. Otherwise an error will be generated. For moving a mix of multiple files and folders use drag & drop. If there is an error during the move, a dialog pops up telling you which folder had the problem, then the loop continues if more than one folder was selected.

The program is a compiled AutoHotKey script. It supports any version of Windows that the latest AutoHotKey supports. If you get a warning from your av program, false positives are endemic to compiled AHK apps. Google yourself if you need reassurance.

Here's the page for download:

Hotkeys

edit: I updated this utility with a few sanity checks. For instance it will attempt to stop you from moving the whole drive into a folder in the same drive as in moving C:\ into C:\downloads. Also it will test that the source and target folder are on the same drive letter. For doing copies you should use another means. This is for directory update type moves where only the directory entry needs to be changed. There's no progress indicator for copy operations.

 

[Smurfyy]

Great list! just a quickie, i have this program called "color transitions" it changes the vista task bar and the top of windows colour, is there a program i can use where it opens this program when windows starts?

Thanks in advanced,
Daniel

 

[pacinitaly]

This worked GREAT on my win2000 thru XPpro sp3

Messer - Memo Session Sound Recorder

I guess because those were towers.
My vista laptop does NOT have the waveout/stereo mix.
I already checked for disabled drivers.

this is a great program if you want to record any sound you hear ( I loved to record albums/tracks from - Artist & radio stations )

check it out, it's awesome ( I still use it on my XP Pro rig )

enjoy, stay well


~Carmine