Discussion on:

Join the ranks of the power users with Windows XP PowerToys

http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-10877-5875848.html

This document lists some of the basic PowerToys, but there are many more little utilities and applications available from Microsoft and other places. What is your favorite utility, tool, desktop enhancement or other widget?

If we get a nice list, I'll compile it and publish it as download/article next month.

I have always disliked the simple digital clock in Windows. Everything else is customizable, why not the clock?

TClock by Kazubon is tiny little utility (approx 300k) that lets you customize the clock. You can change the size, font, color, and format. Make it military time or add the day of the year, month or day of week. It synchronizes with the time server of your choice. It also has a timer and alarm functions.

http://homepage1.nifty.com/kazubon/tclock/index.html

Both sites publish a laundry list of free software that can help anyone from the basic user to the busiest admin. I recommend you check them out.

http://www.sysinternals.com
http://www.analogx.com

with the essentials...So far, it's up to about 1.5 to about 2 gigs of stuff.

Post a list of included software, I would be interested in that.

Thanks.

When I needed to time a VPN software connection down to the actual second in order to diagnose a problem, TClock saved my bacon.

I love this clock. It is by far one of the best utils for XP.

My favorites are:
Symantic Norton Ghost
Symantic Norton SystemWorks
MacAfee Firewall
MacAfee Virus Protection
Not necessarily in this order

especially Norton Ghost

I hope so

No doubt about it.
Although a lot of it's features consist of turnings things "Off" in order to give you "speed". There are in fact some very useful tools in the Tweak. I like the way I can control the Mouse features, Mouse colors, Different color structures for encryption etc.
I can control what programs star and what don't.
I particularly like the advantage that if you have a program in the Control panel that you can't remove because some small bit of file went missing, the tweak removes it anyway, then you cleanup the rest using MS_Regclean
This is an area that I feel Microsoft should perhaps dedicate a little more time as the tweaks that they put out, "Almost" make it worthwhile to download the Auld Nauseum Patches and Updates.
Regards
Aaron

Notepad++ from sorceforge.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Metapad is also nice....

Meatpad: you mean the unit conversion tool? Very cool. For a notepad replacement, also try AkelPad. I'm gonna check out the one from SourceForge- they have good stuff.

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I do not recommed this site because of the hoops you must jump through & will be obsolete by the time your receive it plus 3 credit card purchases. This link is at the bottom of the article.

Hello,, I have a lot... start with WinPatrolPlus,
SpywareGuard, BHODemon2.0, www.avery.com gives free templates for designprolimited7,Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus, www.virtualearthmapsmsn.com, Winguard pro 2005, RoboForm, Syncback v3.2.4, Secretmakerv4., Ad-aware6, Picasa, KarenWare, Winuscon v1.56, Abisource v2.0.14, fxphoto, adobephotoshop, Irfanviewv3.92, Gimp, Serif page plus 5.0,Serif photoplus 5.0,Serif draw 3D plus 2.0, draw plus 4.0, Abi Source (word processor) terrific!, and few others not downloaded.. but I keep if I need it... more like free games etc.. I have fun finding free stuff who works well on my PC...always check for viruses and make sure the sites are not spywares. Those above are not spywares, are full proof... also check www.majorgeeks.com a great site for free good stuff.

Irfan is quite useful, I use it a a lot. It has brilliant shortcut keys and features and plugins.

I use textpad because it is lightweight and does formating and auto colours for java coding and handles diff encodings well.

There's a dude called Mike Edward Moras (e-sushi) who makes a timed shutdown prog (tiny) called timebomb, can't find it hosted anymore.

CDR.EXE - Open/Close CD Drive(s) Programmatically brilliant! http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/W-P/system/cd-rom/article.php/c5775/

->firefox-!

Hiya,
Might be worth taking a look at PSPAD, (www.pspad.com), which provides a multi-functional editing, scripting, and comparison tool.

Arthur

Yep, that's me. The Proggy is called TimeBomb and you can find it on my website: www.e-sushi.net

My most favorite utility is System Mechanic. It does Hard Drive clean up, Registry cleanup, you can remove temp internet files, secure delete of files, Defreag your hd, etc.

I've used it since it first came out. May not find 100% of everythign, but it's close.

Dewalt cordless drill and stun gun for unrully users.

Ultraedit - for editing everything
IrfanView - for Viewing All Image Files
VCL - for Viewing Multimedia without DRM
Ultimate Boot CD - for INstalling New Systems

Probably the best utility I've come across, and use not only on a daily but quite often hourly basis is Hyena by System Tools - http://www.systemtools.com
It only can you control PCs across the Domain but you can control just about everything within Active Directory. You can even install the likes of VNC remotely.

IE Privacy Keeper is by far the most usefull freeware utility To come along in a long time. Lets you automate many maintenance tasks with extensive configuration options

IE Privacy Keeper is by far the most usefull freeware utility To come along in a long time. Lets you automate many maintenance tasks with extensive configuration options

http://browsertools.net/IE-Privacy-Keeper/

Regards,
Andrew Wiltfong

One of my pet hates is when I copy & paste into MS Word and all the formatting goes awry - and I have to use "Paste Special" then choose "unformatted text" before I can get the text in a usable format. That's a whole bunch of clicking! I also need to paste unformatted text into Excel, into emails, etc etc, so it's not as simple as making a macro or a button in one place, it has to be system-wide.

I found PureText (http://stevemiller.net/puretext/) which is a tiny little tool that sits in your system tray. It adds a hotkey (windows + v) for pasting text, just text, no formatting. And it suddenly made life just a little simpler. Of all the tweaks and tools I've found so far (and there are many) this is my favourite.

I have used some of the addons for XP for personal use but the one that save me in my job was admod for Server 2003 from www.joeware.net/win/free/tools/admod.htm
I had inadvertently deleted a vital security group from Active Directory in Server 2003 and the undelete function of this Command line Active Directory modification tool saved me hours if not days of changes or the massive alternative of using the system restore for my entire Active Directory, something which I have had to do once and never want to do again. Not quite on topic I know but too good a tool to not share when ever the opportunity arises.

this is one my favorite tools, it has saved me a lot of time when copying & pasting between different applications, and as an external helper to some built-in text editors lacking basic functions like indenting-unindenting.

http://www.boxersoftware.com/textmonkey.htm

Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin must rank in the 'all time' top ten list.

Tired of the Keystone Kops trying to run your system. Also check out the Startup Monitor

Tired of the Keystone Kops trying to run your system. Also check out the Startup Monitor

I've been using Salamander as a replacement for Windows Explorer from http://www.altap.cz for a while. At first the number of integrated features/tools was overwhelming but now that I'm somewhat used to it, I won't be giving it up.

The Send To powertoy for Win98 is one that I use every single day... the "Any Folder" option is the handiest little thing. Works in XP - good thing, since it seems to have disappeared in the XP powertoy version.

Send To is a must for any W98 User. I also remember a free utility called 'send to anywhere', not sure if it was the same as 'send to' or different.

Send to pretty much rocks. The only downside I've ever experienced is that installs too many sendto mailtype shortcuts, which you can individually uninstall, although the registry remains modified. Also, it kills the sendto-desktop as shortcut. I never thought I used it much until it was gone. Fairly easy to fix if you hack the registry, and worth it since sendto is so cool. Additionally, you can enable the Copyto and Moveto context menu extensions in the registry, why they are disabled I don't know, but they are similar to Sendto Any folder.

Virtual Desktop Manager would be at the very top of my list if it worked well. I am a DBA in a very dynamic environment and need to have many windows open at the same time. I would love to have a large number of desktops, each having related windows open.

I have reliable multiple desktops in my Solaris and Linux worlds. Why not in XP? It's a puzzle.

If you're still subscribed to this discussion, try Dexpot, www.dexpot.de. I've been using it for several months on both 2000 and XP systems.

On a daily basis I use "Free Launch Bar" to replace my use of the Quick Launch Bar. I was looking for an alternative Launch Bar since Microsoft Office no longer has the launch bar it came with. http://www.freelaunchbar.com

Also from a network admin or someone who wants to collect information about their computer including Software Product Key Codes, check out Belarc Advisor. http://www.belarc.com

Both are free downloads, do not expire and do not have any embedded hidden apps.

That is a very useful quick launch replacement.

The Foxit PDF Reader is one that I use a lot.
It allows reading of PDF's with out the overhead of Adobe Reader, loads quickly, and allows to be set as default reader.

www.FoxitSoftware.com

This is certainly a good utility for replacing Task Manager.

Process Explorer is available as a free download from SysInternals.com, and provides a lot more information concerning ports, addressed registry, and processes ... worth taking a look at

SysInternals.com - Process Explorer
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

Direct Downloads
2K / XP / 2003 / Vista (32-bit)
http://www.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorerNt.zip

XP / 2003 / Vista (64-bit)
http://www.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorerAmd64.zip

Check out ATM: another task manager- proc, thread & window control. Also check out software995.com for PDF creation and other cool free stuff. Note Tab Light (free version) is also a cool text editor, fairly extensible last I checked. It is somewhere between Notepad & MS Word in functionality (you kinda gotta see it to understand what I mean).

sysinternals process explorer (way better than task manager)
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

gadwin printscreen 3.1
http://www.gadwin.com

samspade 1.14
http://www.samspade.org/ssw/download.html

belarc advisor
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

*** Spinrite to recover hard drives

***Acronis True Image to backup, restore - leaves Ghost totally in the dust! Check it out.

*** Partition Magic...well, for partition work

Mike

Most useful PowerToy for Win XP: Open Command Window Here (514 KB) http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe
**instead of traversing through the directory tree using the arcane DOS command cd, find it in Windows Explorer, then left-click in the folder and have a Command prompt right there**
Least useful PowerToy for Win XP: SyncToy
**I need a comparator between identical files named differently in different directories, and sadly SyncToy wont do it for me**

The best utility ever. I use it every day. It copies Text, html, or graphics thru the right click "copy" command. It lets you view and paste or print any item you have ever copied. You can glue items together. Great for Photo editing, copying links to paste, parts of text etc.

I prefer Ditto. It does all of above. It has capability of dividing data into groups. It captures all information sent to the clipboard using Printkey. It allows editing of all text data and of labels for graphic images. Tranfer of information between clips is possible.
It has 2 shortcomings. It does not recognize the Yahoo mail feature of autocopy of highlighted text. Ctrl-C is still required. (All other clipboard extenders I've tested do work)
It will not paste images into email. The intermediary of a Word, RTF etc document is necessary.
For complete capability see:
http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/Help

What to do when you are not in the United States, and the Microsoft site says "Only for PC's with English US in the regional settings" - Which tools can we use outside the US without worrying that it'll do something nasty to our PC?

Notepad2
IrFanView
IZArc
Windows Powershell
CCleaner
PrimoPDF
AutoIT
HijackThis
FileShredder
SysInternals Suite
Crossloop