(Hope to make this a "sticky thread" soon) As a self-employed PC tech, I'm always looking for new (or new-to-me) utilities to make my job easier and more profitable. In that spirit, I'd like to ask other PC Techs, or those that work on computers a lot, to post what utilities you make use of when fixing computers. Free or low-cost is best, but if something costs big bucks, but you couldn't live without it, post away... Here are some of my favorites (many of which I've recommended before) - Please be sure to follow the licensing requirements of each program. Some are free for personal use, but become commercial, pay programs when used by technicians, or on computers owned by anyone other than a private person: Ultimate Boot CD for Windows - Donationware. - this is my favorite, most used tool, that saves me countless hours. You can build a custom, bootable CD with many utilities that are indispensable for PC repair. By the way, the UBCD4W is based on the original ->>>BartPE bootable CD. It's stripped down in comparison, but sometimes that's a good thing... Ultimate Boot CD ("DOS" based) - Donationware. - Like the UBCD4Windows, above, this CD is bootable, and has many useful utilities for diagnosing and fixing computer problems. Norton (Symantec) Ghost (in various versions) - commercial license. - Ghost, especially in the older versions (Ghost 2003, or Ghost 8), will allow you to easily image and/or clone hard disks without installing the program on the computer (the product CD is bootable, allowing "cold" imaging). Making an image of a hard drive before working on it in any other way helps to ensure you don't lose any customer data, and gives you a baseline to go back (revert) to if anything goes wrong. Ghost 8 is especially powerful if added to the UBCD4W disc above... Acronis True Image 10 - commercial license. - this is the major competitor to Ghost. It also clones and images hard discs. A bootable CD can be made that allows for "cold", offline imaging and recovery. Files can be recovered from systems that will no longer boot into Windows. I'm quickly becoming partial to True Image over Ghost. Again, True Image can be added to the ultimate boot CD for Windows to make it especially useful. Norton/Symantec PartitionMagic - commercial license. - resize/create partitions "non-destructively" with this low-cost utility. There are open source alternatives available, as part of many bootable Linux LiveCDs. Gparted comes to mind. Anti-malware programs: To many to get to detailed, but here's what I use routinely for cleaning infected PCs (and for prevention purposes) - Spybot Search & Destroy - Ad-Aware 2007 - Windows Defender - SpywareBlaster - HijackThis! - AVG Free - Browser Hijack Retailiator - MOST of these are included in, or can be added to the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. More to come as I think of them... Windows Updates and Patching Systems: AutoPatcher - Donationware. allows techs to download and install all Windows security updates on target systems without needing an Internet connection, plus it's much more automated, require maybe one or two reboots at most. Speaking of automation (getting new/repaired systems up and running quicker): Win-Get - open source. allows you to automatically download the latest version of many open source & free programs, and then automatically, silently install them. InstallPad - freeware works in a similar manner. I highly recommend both of these programs. Other similar programs include AppSnap, WPKG, WinLibre!, and others. Remote Control/repair: I'm really liking the free ShowMyPC.com - very very simple for clients to download and run, so you can take control of their PC and do simple remote repairs. Similar is Zolved Remote Control. Magic Jellybean (Windows XP) keyfinder - recover Windows XP CD-Key - when added to UBCD4W will even allow you to recover the key with the system "offline". IE PassView - recover/save Internet Explorer site-passwords before wiping systems. The website has a TON of other very useful password recovery tools (for mail accounts, wireless network SSIDs/Passphrases, etc). Registry/Temp files Cleanup: CCleaner - Freeware. - Backup/Optimize registry nLite - Donationware. - make customized, automated, unattended Windows installation CDs. Also try XP ISO Builder. PC Inspector has a few (great) file recovery programs available - Freeware. - they also have a very useful tool available in their taskmanager. - I use this to schedule automated Spybot S&D scans, to fire up the excellent JK Disk Defragmenter program, etc. More to come from me later, but let's hear what YOU use! EDIT: added a few more... PC Decrapifier - commercial if used by business - freeware for personal use. helps you quickly remove those rarely-useful programs that come installed on new computers. You'll need this if you use a factory recovery CD, and boot to find tons of garbage programs need removed Easy Uninstaller - a program that lets you select MULTIPLE items to be removed at one time...so you can walk away and do something else, perhaps... - Haven't used it myself, but Absolute Uninstaller looks like another useful free uninstaller that can 'batch uninstall' programs. Fab's Auto Backup lets you quickly and easily backup things like IE Favorites, E-mails and settings, then you can use it to restore the files again...included on UBCD4W, or can be run from within Windows... "AutoRuns" - by Microsoft - this tool is similar to HijackThis, in that it shows just about every single thing that starts automatically on a computer, and lets you remove the things you don't want... A Norton Ghost alternative is PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) LiveCD - open source. Another Ghost alternative is DriveImage XML - freeware. - this is also included on the UBCD4W disc...this program seems a tad slow to me, but it does work... Regshot.exe from this page allows you to take a snapshot of the system registry, and then a second snapshot after you've made some type of system change via the GUI, and then it detects what changed, and makes you a .reg file that you can use to effect the same changes on other systems. Good for getting you personal tweaks onto other systems easily. Here is a list of about 35 Linux LiveCDs (some overlap in function) designed to repair computers... Haven't tried this yet, but this webpage claims you can make a universal Ghost image with a program named MySysprep. Supposed to complement Microsoft's Sysprep tool. Here's another page with info on using Ghost and Sysprep together... Similar to Belarc Advisor, is the free AusLogics System Information tool. They also make a free Registry Defragging tool, and a free Hard Drive Defragmenting tool. - this tool is included on the UBCD4W CDR. One more website I feel I have to mention: Shell Extension City - I seem to come across more free, useful little utilities there than just about anywhere else. Browse the alphabetical listings on the left side of the page. |
P.S. A useful site for techs is 
