Top
Tip!
Click Here To Check If Your Drivers Are Up-To-Date!
Little Things We Can't Do Without
|
I've called this section Life Savers because I'm hoping I can create
a list of applications that will help increase the pleasure of computing or else
help control some of the nastier side of that big wide world we call the
Internet.
Evidence Eliminator During our
day to day pc activities literally everything we do or see is recorded. We
download a file from the internet, a record of it is stored on our hard drive.
We decide to delete it, another record is stored. We go to our online bank,
another set of details are stored on the hard drive. All of this stored
information is available for those 'in the know' to view at their leisure. And
I'm not talking about would be hackers here. What about the wife, the kids, even
their friends? Say, for example, the internet home page is hijacked and replaced
by a link to a porn site. What happens when the wife or kids come to use the pc
and find a rather erotic home page instead of the one they are used to. Of
course it isn't our fault, but they don't look at it that way, do they?.
Fortunately there is a simple and safe way of removing these files and cleaning
your hard drive at the same time so as to leave no trace. The answer is Evidence
Eliminator. This is probably 'the best' security software you can buy. It is
simple and effective to use and even the current best forensic software is
unable to recover files deleted by Evidence Eliminator. We could bury
our head in the sand in the mistaken belief that 'because we have deleted the
file it is gone forever' If only it were that simple. Evidence Eliminator gives
the user the peace of mind that, once Evidence Eliminator has deleted and
cleaned the hard drive, all incriminating evidence is gone for good. The other
advantage, of course, is that, without all those unwanted files etc, the pc may
actually run faster. If there is
one piece of software worth it's weight in gold then it has to be Evidence
Eliminator! Download
Evidence Eliminator™ software and protect your PC from investigations.
Click here to download
NoClone There are
numerous applications on the market that purport to recover disk space. The only
problem is they are not always as successful as they make out. The main culprit
for bloating your and thus reduce your disk space is duplicate files. These
files scatter themselves all over your hard drive gobbling up space at a rate of
knots. In many instances these duplicate files are simply redundant and,
therefore, not contributing anything to your system other than taking up
valuable space. NoClone uses a byte by byte comparison to search for duplicate
files such as picture, video, music, DLLs and a host of other files so that you
can effectively and safely delete everything that is not needed. It even has a
smart marker system to enable you to locate duplicate files by date, version,
size, folder and file name pattern. NoClone is shareware and is available from: SP2
Firewall Telecon If you are
running a network with Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Server (SP1) and prefer using
the Windows Firewall to any of the other third party firewall applications then
the SP2 Firewall Telecon will be of interest to you. The SP2 Firewall Telecon is
a client over IP Remote Windows SP2 Firewall management application, capable of
managing an unlimited amount of client firewalls. From one simple screen the
administrator can edit, maintain and distribute firewall policies to every pc on
the network. The cost of the software is £39 for 15 Clients, rising to £510 for
unlimited clients. For further details see the SP2 Firewall Telecon review (SP2
Firewall Telecon) Ad-Aware Ad-Aware
searches your hard drive for ad-ware and spy-ware that has been installed while
you have been visiting web site. Ad-Aware is probably one of the best ad and
spy-ware application around and is certainly well worth having installed on your
pc. You can download the free version of Ad-Aware from: SpyBot
Search and Destroy SpyBot search
and destroy is another excellent application for dealing with spyware, malware,
dialers etc. Another advantage of this software is that it also checks the
registry for any inconsistencies. So basically it has a two fold operation -
ridding your machine of spy and ad-ware and also making sure nothing untoward is
happening in the Windows registry. It can also clean useage tracks. This is
especially useful if you happen to share a pc. Again another 'must have'. It
will run along side of Ad-Aware but you may receive an error message regarding
backup files. The software is freeware but you can make a donation to the author
if you wish. Spybot Search and Destroy is a available from: Zone
Alarm Perhaps one
of the best know of the firewall software. Of course, Windows XP does contain
it's own firewall but, unfortunately, it is not too user friendly. Therefore
Zone Alarm is a better bet. It is highly recommended and comes in a free version
as well as a pay version. The pay version has more 'qualities' but, for general
use, the free version is well worth having. This can be downloaded from: AVG
Anti Virus The amount of
people who don't bother with virus protection in the hope that 'it will never
happen to me' actually beggars belief. There are a number of free anti virus
packages available on the internet so not being able to afford anti virus is a
poor excuse. AVG Anti
Virus is one such freeware application. It is easy to set up and use and
protects both your system and also incoming emails. In itself the freeware
program does have a few minor limitations - you can, for instance schedule an
anti virus scan at a particular time. For this you need to purchase a copy of
AVG Anti Virus. But the free version protects your pc just as well as if you had
purchased a copy. Just remember to update the virus definitions on a regular
basis and you will be fully protected. AVG Anti Virus is available to download
from: Erunt It is amazing
how many people see an article or feature on tweaking the registry and
completely miss the obvious - Make sure you back up the registry before making
alterations. Okay some people are really lucky and never get any problems after
they have edited the registry. But what happens if you do get problems? No back
up and you are in deep trouble. Of course Windows XP does have it's own utility
to back up registry files, but really this is pretty basic. To be safe you need
a more substantial utility like Erunt. Erunt - short
for Emergency Recovery Utility NT - is a small 574kb utility capable of creating
a complete back up of your registry, including security hives and other related
sections. It is simple to use and, more importantly, it is freeware. No system
should be without this handy utility. Erunt also contains NTREGOPT a registry
optimisation utility for Windows NT/2000/XP. Erunt is available from: CleanCache CleanCache is
a small utility that helps cover your tracks when you have been using the
Internet. This is done quite successfully by CleanCache removing entries stored
in your Temporary Internet File, Cookie Cache, History Cache and the all
important, but hard to delete, Index dat files. If you are
one for high security then CleanCache is a must. As well as cleaning out the
obvious cache files it also cleans Typed URL file, Auto Complete, recent
Documents, Run History, Search History, MRU Registry Entries, Recycle bin and
Clipboard. The current version is 2.23. The file size is a modest 384kb.
CleanCache is available from: |