Posted by Samer on September 7, 2010 in HD Utils, Utilities |
Most of the readers of this blog are familiar with CCleaner, probably the world’s most free popular hard drive (and registry) cleaning program, featured in my “Top 30 Freeware” post.
But if you have a lot of apps installed, there is a high likelihood that a lot of redundant and useless files are accumulating on your hard drive anyway, despite CCleaner’s cleaning activity. The reason: for many apps, CCleaner has to be told where to look. Although CCleaner offers support for a handful of very common applications, such as MS Office or Adobe Flash Player, for many more applications, such as most alternative internet browsers or apps such as uTorrent or KMplayer, etc.. CCleaner simply has no map to guide it.
This is where CCEnhancer can help. This CCleaner add-on adds support for hundreds of extra custom programs to CCleaner, beyond the handful that it supports by default. It simply scans your system to see what programs you have installed and adds support for many to CCleaner in seconds. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on September 4, 2010 in How To, Productivity & Applications, System, Utilities, Virtualization |
There are a handful of free machine virtualization programs out there, such as VirtualBox, VMWare, and of course Microsoft’s Virtual PC. These programs will let you run another instance of an operating system within your current operating system. The only problem is that, unless you’re virtualizing Linux or another free OS, you will need a working license to run a virtual instance of a Windows OS (as well as an installation CD or ISO file of course).
What you may not have known, however, is that if you’re a Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate user (32 or 64 bit), Microsoft actually provides you with a full fledged, fully licensed instance of Windows XP that you can run within your Windows 7 environment, which they refer to as Windows XP mode. In fact, Windows XP mode will let you run virtualized Windows XP applications straight from your Windows 7 desktop or start menu, via a virtual remote desktop connection, just as if they were installed locally on Windows 7.
This tutorial will present, for those editions of Windows 7 that support it, a step by step guide for getting you up and running your virtual Windows XP instance from within Windows 7. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on September 1, 2010 in Games | Tagged Games |
If you like (a) free games, (b) games with nice, creative artwork and sound, (c) mindless blasting (or just blasting in general), and (d) all of it put together in a way that somehow just works then check out GunGirl2.
Possibly worse than a Republican takeover of congress, the world has been taken over by zombies. GunGirl takes matters into her own hands, grabs her pistol, and heads out to kick some zombie butt. This game is a platform shoot em up where your character — there’s also a guy character (GunDude?) that you could choose – traverses a varied post apocalyptic landscape laying waste to essentially everything in her path, whilst collecting powerups and weapons along the way. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on August 30, 2010 in System, Utilities |
This one for the ubergeeks, amongst which I (hopefully) count myself. HashTab is a free Windows Explorer extension that adds a new “File Hashes” tab in the right click/properties dialog that simply displays the file’s calculated hash value, in order to verify a files’s integrity and authenticity.
Another feature that your brand new Hash Tab offers: to compare the hash values of another file to the one you are looking at. HashTab supports multiple hash algorithms such as CRC32,MD5, SHA1, SHA2, RipeMD, HAVAL and Whirlpool. Windows and Mac OSX versions available Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on August 27, 2010 in Internet, Internet Utils, System, Utilities, xclude |
Imagine the following situation: you have multiple wireless-enabled PCs or devices, a wired internet connection, and no wireless router to connect a wi-fi hotspot. Would it be possible to use the wireless adapter from your PC to create a mobile hotspot that can be used to provide all of your wireless enabled devices with an internet connection?
The answer is yes, provided that (a) your PC runs Windows 7, and (b) you install and run a free program called Virtual Router.
Aside from being completely free, this program is noteworthy in that setting up your wireless hotspot is simplicity itself.: all you need to do is run the program, provide a a name and password for your network, and you’re done. Your wi-fi hotspot will be up and running within minutes. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on August 26, 2010 in Freewaregenius Picks, Productivity & Applications |
If you’ve ever wanted to measure the time you spend working on various tasks or projects then you should check out this free program.
Grindstone is a kind of to-do list with a twist. It will let you create a list of tasks and an (optional) estimated time of completion and/or a due date, as well as an hourly charge rate for calculations. But where it shines is the desktop-based tools designed to measure the exact amount of time spent on each task. The user has the ability to pause, resume or switch tasks via a small widget floating on the desktop, or to use an “egg timer” widget which can be used to keep track of chunks of time that you might to spend doing something.
The first thing I had to overcome before starting to use this program was my suspicion that it would show that I spend more time than I care to admit loafing around, procrastinating, and/or randomly surfing the internet. On the other hand I was hoping that the act of measuring itself will make me more productive or focused (and it may have worked).
I will say this: Grindstone works better than I thought it would, largely because of it’s nice implementation and a nice set of desktop-based tools. Continue reading ..
Posted by Jason on August 24, 2010 in Productivity & Applications, Utilities | Tagged Linux |
Pen Drive Linux has made it easy to turn your USB drive into a Live bootable Linux instance, allowing you to easily sample a Linux flavor or create the free, open-source tool you need. The group also provides another tool called MultiBoot USB that allows you to take multiple Linux ISOs and utilities with you on a single flash drive. There are a few scenarios out there where it would be really handy to have a specific Linux tool (like GParted, Clonezilla, antivirus rescue CDs, DBaN amongst others) available and this tool allows you to fit all of those onto a single USB drive, assuming the drive can hold them all.
To use MultiBoot USB, you have to meet a few requirements. Your drive needs to be FAT32 formatted but the utility can take care of this for you. The target PC needs to be able to boot into a USB. You need to be using Windows to make your bootable drive. Then you have to download the USB Creator and the ISOs you want to include (but the tool can also download those if you don’t already have the ISOs downloaded).
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. Continue reading ..
