If you like to constantly be changing the look and feel of your Windows 7 installation either by changing themes or modifying background animations then you will probably be interested in this Windows Club post titled the "Ultimate list of tools, links and guide to customizing Windows 7". The tools this article links to include:Windows 7 Start Button...

There are tons of Windows shell extensions, applications and tricks out there which do everything from copying the current folder location to the clipboard to file splicing and merging. If you have lots of these types of tools that you make use of, you may want to give the free utility, FilerFrog, a look. FilerFrog is a swiss-army knife for Windows Explorer...

I have previously written about the Everything tool which quickly searches your hard drive for particular files. The problem with this utility is it only searches based on the file name and not the contents. For for situations where you need to search for text inside of a file, check out the File Searcher utility. File Searcher allows you to search any file in...

When installing some applications, their setup files are distributed in MSI format which is simply an alternate form of a “setup.exe” file. Just like Exe files can be edited by by tools such as Resource Hacker, MSI files can be edited with the InstEd tool. Among other things, this free tool allows you to do the following:View virtually all...

Screensavers were originally created to, as their name suggests, save your screen from image burn-in which could happen on older monitors if the same image stayed on the screen for a long time. For probably the past 8 or so years they haven’t really served much of a purpose (assuming you upgraded your monitor) other than to look pretty. A tool which can...

A feature that some Windows users find annoying is that inactive windows cannot be scrolled until they are first activated. This functionality can be really handy if you are comparing two files side by side and want to scroll each one without having to jump from window to window. To add this functionality, simply install WizMouse which adds the following...

Many system admins types have run into cases where log files can get extremely large (think gigabytes) over time. Notepad has a hard enough time opening a 10 MB file and other popular Notepad replacements such as Notepad++, while faster than Notepad, can still take a fair amount of time to open an extremely large file. Enter the appropriately named tool: Large...

When you install certain programs, sometimes they like to add entries to your context (right-click) menu. Some of these options can be quite useful while some simply clutter up the menu. While most programs offer options to disable their context menu (shell) integration, you might have to sift through pages of preferences to find this option. As a simpler...

After using our respective system for a while, we all have tendencies towards the folders we use on a regular basis. Be it saving or opening from these locations, the ability to access these folders quickly can be a nice time saver. A utility which make the process of accessing these folders quick and easy is Folder Guide. Select from right click menu...

For those of you out there who are dual booting Windows with another OS (Linux most likely), a utility you may be very interested in is EasyBCD. EasyBCD extends and revamps the Windows Vista/Windows 7 BCD bootloader, and with EasyBCD, almost anything is possible. Setting up and configuring a dual-boot between Windows 7, Windows Vista, older versions of Windows...

Now that many ISP’s are paying more attention to the amount and type of bandwidth customers are using, those of you impacted may want to keep an eye on or even control the amount of bandwidth being used. A tool which can help with this is NetLimiter. You can use NetLimiter to set download/upload transfer rate limits for applications or even single...

If you are aspiring to be a bit more “geeky” with your Windows system, there are no better tools than the Sysinternals Suite of utilities. Two of the most powerful are Process Explorer and Process Monitor which give you incredible insight into what your system in doing. When you first use these tools, you may not know exactly what you are looking at...

If you are accustomed to using the Windows file permission interface, the Linux chmod permission numbering can be confusing. You may run into this problem when setting up a web site or FTP server on Windows which says something like “chmod the permissions on folder X to 755″ as the documentation may assume you are running Linux. To make the Windows...

As many of you know, CCleaner is a popular utility which scours Windows for “garbage” files and removes them from your system with a single process. Wouldn’t it be great if CCleaner did this for more than just Windows programs? If this is a question you have pondered then take a look at CCEnhancer. CCEnhancer is a small tool which adds support...

A little known tool from Microsoft titled RichCopy is deemed by the author of the tool’s download page as “the answer to all your file copying needs”. Being a big user and fan of the built in utilities, XCopy and RoboCopy this is a pretty bold statement, however RichCopy takes the functionality of RoboCopy to a new level: What you’ll find...

Digging into the incredibly useful NirSoft freeware utilities, today we take a look at SmartSniff Packet Sniffer. SmartSniff is a network monitoring utility that allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers. You can view the TCP/IP conversations in...

Mac users looking to get some insight into their battery power outside of the typical X% charge left should take a look at the freeware utility coconutBattery. coconutBattery isn’t just a tool which shows you only the current charge of your battery – it also shows you the current maximum capacity of it in relation to the original capacity your...

Here is something interesting Mac users might want to take a look at. The Growl application centralizes the way applications notify you of events using a common interface. For example, the following events can all notify you through the Growl system:Safari finishing download a file. New email received. Incoming Skype call or message. Low battery.The benefit...

In Windows XP, the system restore feature was added to the OS which allows you to take incremental snapshots of your system state as a tool to assist in recovery from OS problems. While certainly not bulletproof, it is a useful feature nonetheless. By default Windows creates a new restore point when updates and/or applications are installed, however if you want...

One of the very few programs I have gone on record as officially recommending is the excellent WinPatrol monitoring utility. So to keep you updated, earlier this week a new version was released which adds registry monitoring: I frequently get recommendations from pros on new registry locations which should be monitored.  In some cases, these locations are...