This little utility can be used to display whole bunch of information about your hard/cd/dvd/usb drives. Here are the main features at a glance:
- Display a list of all partitions and drives;
- Mapped drive letters;
- CD-ROM/DVD Drive info and capabilities;
- CD/DVD Media info;
- “Subst” i.e. assign a drive letter to a folder;
- Drive details like Vendor, Serial Number, etc.
- Portable – just one executable;
- Benchmarks;
Version Reviewed: 4.10
Home Page: Drive Manager
SpaceSniffer is a neat little portable application to help you understanding where all disk space goes to.
Here are the main features:
- Fast, simple and intuitive user interface;
- Data is presented as a clickable TreeMap;
- Powerful filtering by size, tag, name, etc.
- Adjust level of details displayed on the screen;
- Portable – no installation needed – just a single executable;
- Drill up and down in the data;
- Export to text file of the selected results;
SpaceSniffer is pretty fast (I have about 200GB out of 640GB taken on my hard drive and the scan took about 1.5 minutes).
Version Reviewed: 1.1.2.0
Works on Windows 2000+ including Windows 7
Did you know that many antivirus companies are offering free rescue CDs you can download and use to clean your computer from viruses and spyware? Such CDs are especially useful when you cannot boot your computer due to a virus infection or in some cases the virus cannot be cleaned, because some windows components that are currently running are infected. In other cases malware can prevent antivirus systems from running. Here is a list of some of the popular choices out there.
- Kaspersky - about 100MB and my personal favorite used on the computers at my home: Download Kaspersky Rescue CD. The disk is Linux Kaspersky 2008 engine based and features virus definitions update function, which is very important, so you don’t have to build the rescue cd every time the virus definitions change.
Note: If you own 2009 KAV or KIS you can build such a disk yourself directly from the Kaspersky interface.
- BitDefender – about 228MB. Download BitDefender Rescue CD 2.0 . It is also a linux based solution. Similarly to Kaspersky it offers automatic virus definitions update. Also a very good antivirus. Another nice feature is that the CD includes a memory test (Memtest86+), which is a nice addition.
- VBA32 – abot 75MB. Download VBA32 Rescue Live CD. I recently stumbled across this rescue CD. Linux based and has a text mode interface. The small download size makes it useful and also can update virus signatures from internet.
- Avira AntiVir – about 45MB. Download Avira AntiVir Rescue CD. An excellent antivirus, also linux based rescue CD. Its small size allows very fast boot and download, although it doesn’t support online signatures update. Another nice feature is that it comes as an executable, that burns itself to a CD or writes an .iso image. Avira also offer a free antivirus system to install on your computer.
- F-Secure – about 222MB. Again a Linux based Rescue CD. Donwload F-Secure Rescue CD 3.01. Good antivirus system, but a very large download file. It also features virus signatures update over internet, so you’d only need to download it once.
Hopefully this information will help you the next time your computer gets infected. I would rather try more than one antivirus in such case, instead of relying on just one. All things considered all of the above are very good products, so take your pick.
Following an earlier post about SIW for a software to use as a hardware detection here is a great portable alternative. HWiNFO32 Features very comprehensive hardware detection set. It can also monitor various sensors on your computer (like temperatures, voltages, etc.). Contains some basic benchmarking, which can be useful.
Overall a very useful program to have on your USB Drive.
InSSIDer is a Windows Vista compatible tool for scanning for Wi-Fi networks. It is an excellent, simple to use piece of software. Main features include:
- Show network properties (SSID, Mac address, channel, strength, etc.);
- Works well on Vista and WindowsXP 64;
- It can graph signal strength over time;
Overall a very useful program to have installed on your laptop and a great replacement for NetStumbler, which does not work on Vista.
