Resource Tools and utilities

[Cas Bitton]

Ever wonder what happens when you take your computer to a technician, or a store to be serviced?

Sure they fix your problems, but at what cost? There are a range of resources you can do your self at home that are quick, free and easy.

This post will continue to expand on a wide range of software to resolve most common issues or dilemma's that commonly effect us.

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

What is it?

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware open source utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows from your registry. It allows you to print or save your keys for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 family of products. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.

Screenshot:


Download:
http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/


Undelete Plus

What is it?

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to restore accidentally deleted files. It can also recover files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin, permanantly deleted files within Windows using the Shift + Delete, and files that have been deleted from within a Command
Prompt.

Undelete Plus works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32,NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Screenshot:


Download:
http://www.undelete-plus.com

SIW - System Information for Windows

What is it?

SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.

SIW can create a report file (CSV, HTML, TXT or XML), and is able to run in batch mode (for Asset Inventory Tracking, Computer (Software and Hardware) Inventory, PC Audit, Software Audit, Software License Compliance Management).

The system information is divided into few major categories:

* Software: Operating System, Installed Software and Hotfixes, Processes, Services, Users, Open Files, System Uptime, Installed Codecs, Software Licenses (Product Keys / Serial Numbers / CD Key), Secrets (Password Recovery).
* Hardware: Motherboard, Sensors, BIOS, CPU, chipset, PCI/AGP, USB and ISA/PnP Devices, Memory, Video Card, Monitor, Disk Drives, CD/DVD Devices, SCSI Devices, S.M.A.R.T., Ports, Printers.
* Network: Network Cards, Network Shares, currently active Network Connections, Open Ports.
* Tools: Eureka! (Reveal lost passwords hidden behind asterisks), MAC Address Changer, Monitor Test, Shutdown / Restart.
* Real-time monitors: CPU, Memory, Page File usage and Network Traffic.

SIW is a standalone utility that does not require installation (Portable Freeware) - one less installed program on your PC as well the fact that you can run the program directly from an USB flash drive, from a floppy, from a network drive or from a domain login script.

Platform: Microsoft Windows 98 / Me / NT4 / 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Media Center / Tablet PC / Windows 2003 Server R2 / Windows Server 2003 x64 / Windows XP x64 / Windows Vista / Windows Vista x64 / Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 x64 / WinRE / Bart PE / Winternals ERD Commander

Screenshot:


Download:
http://www.gtopala.com

Gnome Partition Editor

What is it?

GParted is the Gnome Partition Editor application. Before attempting to use it, here is some basic background information.

A hard disk is usually subdivided into one or more partitions. These partitions are normally not re-sizable (making one smaller and the adjacent one larger). The purpose of GParted is to allow the individual to take a hard disk and change the partition organization therein, while preserving the partition contents.

GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging). See Features, before using it.

Screenshot:


Download:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Ophcrack

What is it?

Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms.

» Runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, ...
» Cracks LM and NTLM hashes.
» Free tables available for Windows XP and Vista.
» Brute-force module for simple passwords.
» LiveCD available to simplify the cracking.
» Loads hashes from encrypted SAM recovered from a Windows partition, Vista included.
» Free and open source software (GPL).

Screenshot:


Download:
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net

Ultimate Boot CD

There are many tools that you can find on the Ultimate Boot CD, and really is a great little package that saves me from adding another 50+ items to this thread.

For a number of years Internode have provided a mirror for this CD, it can be found here:

ftp://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/ubcd
http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/ubcd

I can't put it any better, so I will quote the UBCD website on this one

You need the Ultimate Boot CD if you want to:

* Run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on them.

* Free yourself from the slow loading speed of the floppy drive. Even if you do have a floppy drive, it is still much much faster to run your diagnostic tools from the CDROM drive, rather than wait for the tool to load from the floppy drive.

* Consolidate as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD. Wouldn't you like to avoid digging into the dusty box to look for the right floppy disk, but simply run them all from a single CD? Then the Ultimate Boot CD is for you!

* Run Ultimate Boot CD from your USB memory stick. A script on the CD prepares your USB memory stick so that it can be used on newer machines that supports booting from USB devices. You can access the same tools as you would from the CD version.

When you boot up from the CD, a text-based menu will be displayed. Select the tool you want to run. Once selected the tool actually boots off a virtual floppy disk created in memory.

Whats on the Ultimate Boot CD?

Anything you could want, even things that don't exist are on this CD.

For a full and up to date list, visit the official website - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com



Tutorials and Customization:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/tutorials.html
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/customize.html

So there you go. The UBCD will be your next stop if you ever have a Hard drive issue, ram problem or a range of other things you just need to resolve.

It's free and easy

[Shinanigans]

CPU & System - Monitoring

CPU-Z - is a monitoring and information utility that requires no installation and is only a few MB in size. It is extremely informative when it comes to system information, pulling down everything from current CPU voltage to JDEC memory specification to motherboard BIOS information. CPU-Z is the app to include in your screenshots when showing off overclocks and other system information.




Coretemp - is a CPU temperature monitoring utility that is very simple to use, but also very handy. Everything from G15 LCD application use, CPU load percentage, CPU VID information and of course CPU temperature! Support for most late model AMD and Intel CPU's. Coretemp automatically logs to a .txt file in the main coretemp directory for off-screen temp checking. Coretemp doesn't require installation.




HWmonitor - is a great utility for monitoring voltages and a large array of temperatures in the one small space. I find the DIMM (memory) voltage readouts to be very handy as memory voltage monitoring software seems to be pretty scarce. Hardware Monitor is developed by the same mob who created CPU-Z, "CPUID".



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CPU & System - Benching/Stressing

SuperPI MOD - is the software to use when testing overclocks and is especially noteable for measuring RAM performance. It's small in size and doesn't require any installation. You can specify the amount you wish to calculate Pi to, anything from 16,000 to 32,000,000. Some trivia: "In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes within 3 days with Pentium 90MHz, 40MB main memory and 340MB available storage."




Prime95 - is one of the most commonly used stress programs amongst the overclocking community. I'm of the personal belief that Prime95 became more popular than Orthos back when quad core processors were growing in popularity, as one of the downsides with Orthos is that it only ran a maximum of two threads, thus only stressing half a quad core CPU. Prime95 on the other hand will run as many threads as you've got. The Prime95 website is pretty daunting but it's mostly about the [optional] online database services which you can opt out of when running Prime. Scroll half way down the page and you'll see the .zip files available for direct download and use. No installation is required.



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GPU - Monitoring/Overclocking

GPU-Z - is very similarly named to another program in this thread, but is not developed by the same people. It is however, extremly informative like it's distant cousin. Along with clock frequencies, GPU-Z also informs you of your current PCI-E bandwidth, BIOS version, detailed card information and also any sensor readings like temperatures and voltages. Like CPU-Z, GPU-Z doesn't require any installation, and also checks for new versions upon startup.




EVGA Precision - is a much more user friendly version of Rivatuner. Released back in April 2008, EVGA Precision is a lightweight GPU monitoring and overclocking application which has a few handy features but requires no intial setup and is extremely easy to operate and understand. The current 1.5 version comes in at a hefty 1MB and it does require installation.




Rivatuner - is the premiere overclocking software developed by "Unwinder" and is affiliated with GPU website giants, "Guru3D". This utility is so powerful that there are features you still won't have discovered after several months of use! Everything from clock speed changes, to extremely extensive monitoring and aftermarket plugins, to scheduled fan control and display configuration. Riva requires installation.



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GPU - Benching/Stressing

ATi Tool - whilst the name is somewhat misleading, ATi Tool also works perfectly fine on nVidia cards. It has some pretty handy features, such as it's artifact scanner. When overclocking your graphics card it adds stress to the components and you will eventually get to a point where the card doesn't want go any further. This limit is indicated by flickers and faulty textures being placed on the screen. ATi Tool has a window which shows a fury square. If the card is above it's clock abilities you will start to see yellow dots randomly flicker.



Unigine - is a great video card benching utility that's lightweight and provides consistent results. The version in the screenshot is called "Sanctuary" and runs in either windowed or fullscreen mode, in either OpenGL or DirectX formats. Sanctuary is around 50MB and doesn't require installation. The latest demo from Unigine is called Tropics and is a lot more stressful on hardware than Sanctuary. Both demos have a decent benchmarking feature with saveable results.



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HDD - Benching/Optimisation

HDtune - is benchmarking for your hard drive. The free version of HDtune has the ability to benchmark a drives Read speed and access time and spits the results out onto a graph. The full version has the ability to bench write speed as well as some other features. HDtune requires installation.



JKDefrag - is a quick and easy hard drive defragment program which is very lightweight, quick and very thorough. There are no menus and any non-standard settings you want to use need to put run via a command line switch. The main window gives a live show of what is happening on the hard drive. JKdefrag doesn't require any installation.