eleven Comments

• SursumCorda

  2011-01-25 0738

  What a great list, thanks. I only have two of these now -- but will keep the others in mind. Well, some of them anyway. For others I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about. :)

  And you were the kid next door who kept calling us and saying, "My computer's broken...." Personally, I think that's how you got so good at fixing computers -- you weren't afraid to mess around and, yes, sometimes break them.

• David July

  2011-01-25 0801

  Agreed. To this day, I prefer to work my way through a procedure, following documentation or figuring it out on my own, rather than have someone show me how to perform it. Trial and error can be an excellent learning tool, especially for people like me who do not work in life or death situations.

  Glad you liked the list!

• Stephan

  2011-01-31 1343

  SursumCorda sent me here, and because I already had four of these programs I thought I'd add a few more. My quick thoughts on those I've tried:
  - CCleaner looks good and cleaned the registry well, but my hope that it might perhaps catch that "SAMPLE.EXE" which won't close (twice) when I shut down wasn't fulfilled.
  - AMP wasn't as immediately intuitive as hoped for, and I wish it showed more than just the standard alphabet. Unless I missed some feature, it's useless for Asian fonts.
  - IcoFX looks like a very cool program should I ever need an icon. Maybe a favicon for my blog???
  - ResThief I only ran on one random Windows system component, but it looks like a lot of fun and a good basis to get a few icons to play with in IcoFX.
  - POP Peeper was an emotional yoyo. I was first excited to see that I could see my gmail and yahoo e-mails in one inbox, but then I saw that if I checked my yahoo account online, all the mails downloaded to POP Peeper are marked read. POP Peeper shows the unread ones as unread, but the unread status syncing doesn't work, making POP Peeper far less cool than I initially thought.
  - I have yet to try Hugin and Cobian.

  At any rate, thanks for sharing this list!

• David July

  2011-01-31 1934

  Hello Stephan! I have known the Wightman family for 21+ years so it is great to meet a more recent addition. :)

  I was not familiar with the "sample.exe error at shutdown" issue so I did a little searching and it appears to be the result of malicious intrusion, specifically the W32.Nimda.A@mm worm. Here is some information that may help.

  → bleepingcomputer.com
  → Symantec
  → TechGuy Forums

  Your observations on AMP Font Viewer are accurate. I had not run into the Asian font problem before---I only have the system Japanese fonts installed so I hardly need to browse them---but after some testing, it looks like they are not supported. My sample text 日本語 is transformed into ??? instead.

  Regarding POP Peeper, I have never used it to connect to Gmail or Yahoo, or any IMAP server for that matter. I use POP3 to download the message headers, only downloading the entire message if opened. Marking e-mail read in POP Peeper has no affect on the message's status on the server, which in my case is essential.

  Thanks for stopping by!

• David July

  2011-02-05 2348

  I like UltraISO but did not want to spend $30 for simple ISO mounting capabilities. Since this article was published, I started using DAEMON Tools Lite for this purpose. So far it is a great little utility. I wanted to mount and unmount ISOs from the context menu, so I added the following modifications to the registry.

  UPDATE 2012-03-03: The command-line parameters for DAEMON Tools Lite have changed since this comment was posted. It has been updated accordingly.

  "Mount" context menu entries for .ISO files:
  
Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Windows.IsoFile\shell\
Create key "Mount"
Create key "command"
Edit value "(Default)"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -mount scsi, 0,"%1"


  "Unmount" context menu entries for .ISO files:
  
Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Windows.IsoFile\shell\
Create key "Unount"
Create key "command"
Edit value "(Default)"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -unmount scsi, 0


  "Unmount" context menu entry for virtual drive:
  
Browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\
Create key "Unount"
Create key "command"
Edit value "(Default)"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -unmount scsi, 0


• David July

  2011-02-21 0157

  Here are two additional tips for software mentioned above.

  Issue: the VirtualBox Host-Only Network adapter displays as "Unidentified network" in the Windows 7 Network and Sharing Center.

  Solution: this simple fix must be applied after each VirtualBox installation and update.

  1. Launch the Registry Editor and browse to key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
  2. Scan through the subkeys and locate the one with a String Value named DriverDesc that equals VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter.
  3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named *NdisDeviceType that equals 1.
  4. Windows will recognize the adapter as part of your existing active network after it is disabled/enabled or the system restarted.

  Issue: the Flash Renamer context menu option does not work on 64-bit systems at present.

  Solution: create a shortcut under the Send To context menu as a workaround.

  1. Browse to %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo.
  2. Create a new shortcut to the Flash Renamer executable, in my case "C:\Program Files (x86)\Flash Renamer\FlashRen.exe", and name it whatever you want.
  3. To rename a batch of files, right-click just one of them and select the new shortcut.
• Stephan

  2011-04-22 0337

  Thanks for the pointer on the possible worm. I did some reading up, and at least one comment made me stop short of running the symantec thing (I did install Spybot and one of the other recommended tools, which didn't find anything). The comment mentioned the Intel PROSet Network adapter, which is what I have - and the SAMPLE.EXE error started showing up after I reinstalled and reconfigured my wireless network (that's another story). My conclusion is that it's probably not a worm in my case, but I'm glad for your pointer and happy I could check it out to my satisfaction.

  I've since tried to use hugin and encountered nothing but problems. It's probably a case of user incompatibility, but I managed reasonable panoramas with my Canon PhotoStitch software, whereas with hugin the preview looked fine but the final product was a disaster - lines, blurs, kind of like watching encrypted TV.

• David July

  2011-04-23 0015

  I am glad to hear your investigation did not reveal anything malicious. I am not sure why you are having so much trouble with Hugin. I suppose if you have a functional alternative, it is not worth spending too much time investigating.

• David July

  2012-09-10 0004

  I recently found these two free utilities useful.

  Network Activity Indicator for Windows 7
  I went looking for the old "two monitors" network activity icon in Windows 7 and discovered it was removed. Fortunately, Igor Tolmachev wrote a small, free utility to provide that functionality (as well as statistics and shortcuts to network settings).

  inSSIDer
  I needed a Wi-Fi scanning and analysis program since the one I had been using was not working. inSSIDer by MetaGeek is an open-source tool to scan access points, compare channels and security, measure signal strength and help improve quality of service.

• SursumCorda

  2012-10-05 1236

  Do you have a recommended Windows 7 replacement for CDBurnerXP? My computers have always come with decent software for copying CDs and DVDs, but my new one did not.

• David July

  2012-10-05 1702

  CDBurnerXP is fully compatible with Windows 7 32/64. Windows 7 has decent built-in support for ISO burning and general disc authoring, but I still use CDBurnerXP to burn just about everything.

  One of the best features is the ability to save project files. I built a presentation disc for the Second Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program and saved it as a project. This way, when they request additional discs be made, all I have to do is open the project and burn away.

Comments Closed

• Article comments are disabled after ninety days. Alternatively, you can send feedback via email.