Category: Freeware

Categories
FREE Freeware Linux nLite Windows

How to Create bootable Windows CD Easily with nLite

nLite is a deployment tool for the bootable unattended Windows ISO.  With it you can remove components, integrate hotfixes, drivers and themes, tweaks, patches and more. . .
Features

  • nLite allows you to customize your installation of Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 2003. You can integrate service packs and hotfixes from Microsoft directly into your windows distribution files without having to re-download and install them every time you need to re-install windows. 
  • There is also the option to remove unwanted components from within Windows. Many applications are automatically included every time Windows is installed. Not every person needs or even wants all of these applications which Microsoft considers necessary. By removing these unwanted components you can free up space within your setup and ultimately save space on your hard drive after installation.
  • nLite also provides a way to customize your installation by allowing numerous tweaks to the way windows looks and operates after it has been installed. You can even bypass Microsoft’s bulky unattended setup instructions and do it the easy way – he nLite way!

Download nLite & give it a try.

Categories
FREE Freeware Notepad Replacement Notepad++ notepad++ examples Open Source SourceForge

5 Great Notepad++ Features

Notepad++ is probably the best text editor for Windows – and it’s FREE. It has a huge range of features for working with text files, scripts, HTML files, etc.  Here are some pointers on just a few of those features.

1. Set Language to match your code
One very nice feature of Notepad++ is the ability to color pieces of code. This is very useful when writing C, SQL, HTML or other types of files, allowing you to easily visually distinguish between functions, reserved words, comments, text, and other types of symbols and expressions in your code.

Notepad++ will automatically detect your code based upon the language selected. You can specify the language yourself or Notepad++ will set it based on the file extension.

HTML as text before specifying language.

HTML code after specifying language.

2. Bulk find & replace
If you want to replace a certain entry in your file(s), Notepad++ is the ticket. Not only can it instantly search through all entries in a file, it can search all open files or even all files in a directory (including sub-directories), including, matching only certain file types.

3. Search and replace using regular expressions
When it comes to finding what you want, Notepad++ is not limited to mere words. You can also use powerful regular expression to match dynamic entries. For example, the below search will find (and replace) all tags in the source of HTML files, regardless of the actual image size specified:

Of course, some knowledge of regular expressions is required to use this feature. Not surprisingly, these regular expressions will also serve you well if you dabble in the Linux command line with sed or awk commands.

4. Tidy HTML code

If you’re writing web articles, there’s a fair chance your code will include a bit of unnecessary breaks, misaligned tags and so forth. Notepad++ can Tidy your HTML code.
For example, here is some unformatted text:

Which we want to format with HTML:

5. Save all open files
While this may not sound too exciting, imagine you have several open files – Notepad++ behaves like Firefox in this regard and opens documents in tabs – each one changed after you ran a bulk find & replace earlier. Saving them one by one can be tedious. Notepad++ saves you the hassle. You can save all open files at once.

Similarly, you can close them all at once.

Conclusion

Notepad++ is an extremely powerful and useful tool. We only scratched the surface on its features. With Notepad++ you can use macros or function completion, compare documents, export files to other formats, and a whole lot more.

Notepad++ also has many useful plugins and it comes in a portable version.

More on Notepad++

Categories
benchmark CrystalMark Freeware HD Tach Linux NoveBench Prime95 Utility

Best free PC Benchmark tools for Windows

Prime95 – test system stability. Prime95 has become extremely popular among PC enthusiasts and overclockers as a stability testing utility. It includes a “Torture Test” mode designed specifically for testing PC subsystems for errors in order to help ensure the correct operation of Prime95 on that system, which effectively stress-tests a PC.

HD Tach – hard drive benchmark tool that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive etc). Drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, IEEE 1394, USB, SATA and RAID are supported.

CrystalMark – benchmark suite, that lets you to test your CPU, memory, HDD and video (GDI, Direct Draw, OpenGL).

NoveBench


  • Extensive CPU speed tests
  • Multi-threaded tests take advantage of multiple cores/processors
  • Hardware accelerated graphics tests
  • Hard drive write speed test
  • CPU temperature monitor
  • Tabbed interface for benchmark results
  • Outputs overall system score
  • Online score comparison system.
  • Freeware.

Categories
FREE Freeware Linux Recovery SSH Utility

Trinity Rescue Kit | CPR for your computer

Trinity Rescue Kit or TRK is a free live Linux distribution that aims specifically at recovery and repair operations on Windows machines, but is equally usable for Linux recovery issues.  TRK is a complete command line based distribution, apart from a few tools like qtparted, links, partition image and midnight commander.

Some of Trinity Rescur Kit’s most significant features

  • Easily reset windows passwords
  • Full read/write and rpm support
  • Multiple virus scan products integrated in a single uniform commandline with online update capability
  • Full ntfs write support thanks to ntfs-3g (all other drivers included as well)
  • Clone NTFS filesystems over the network
  • Wide range of hardware support (kernel 2.6.39.3 and recent kudzu hwdata)
  • Easy script to find all local filesystems
  • Self update capability to include and update all virus scanners
  • Full proxy server support
  • Fun a samba fileserver (Windows-like filesharing)
  • SSH server
  • Recovery and undeletion of files with utilities and procedures
  • Recovery of lost partitions
  • Evacuation of dying disks
  • UTF-8 international character support
  • Powerful multicast disk cloning utility for any filesystem
  • Rootkit detection uitilities

Although version 3.3 is still beta, it is recommended you download this version, as most features which were included in version 3.2 are still running just fine (and are more up-to-date) and the new stuff is presumed to be running fine too.

TRK can be booted three different ways:

  • as a bootable CD which you can burn yourself from a downloadable iso file 
  • from a USB stick/disk (optionally also a fixed disk), installable from Windows or from the bootable TRK cd
  • from network over PXE, which requires some modifications on your local network (version 3.2). Version 3.3 has the ability to act as a network bootserver itself, without any modifications to your local network.

The idea behind Trinity Rescue Kit

From the author:

Back in 2001, I had this great bootable dos cd I created, packed with all great utilities for offline PC operations called “The Vault”.  Unfortunately, the Vault consisted for 90% of software you should pay for. So distributing it in a legal way was certainly no option and I ‘m not the guy that wants to spend his time in maintaining something that ‘s illegal anyway.

So I brewed on the idea of creating a free bootable Linux CD containing all available free tools that can help you in any way of rescueing your Windows installation.  And eventually, this is how far it has gotten now.

Trinity Rescue Kit is based on binaries and scripts from several other distributions, like Timo ‘s Rescue CD, Mandriva 2005 and Fedora Core 3 and 4, as well as many original source packages and tools from other distros.  Startup procedure and methods, several scripts and concept is completely selfmade or at least heavily adapted.

More information.
Download Trinity Rescue Kit.

Categories
FREE Freeware ISO Linux Utility Windows Windows 2003 Windows Vista

Mount an ISO image in Windows 7 or Vista (also works on 2003 and 2008)

The freeware utility from Microsoft to mount ISO Images in XP and 2003 doesn’t work in Windows 7 or Vista. Thankfully there’s another FREE utility that does, Virtual Clone Drive. With it you can mount .ISO, .CCD, .DVD, .IMG, .UDF and .BIN files.

FYI as of the latest version, it should work on Windows 7 or Vista 64 bit edition.

Categories
FREE Freeware Jam Software Linux Utility Windows Windows 2000

TreeSize Free – ever want to know how big various folders are?

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone. TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The space, which is wasted by the file system, can be displayed and the results can be printed in a report. TreeSize Free is freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Download TreeSize Free (here you can find the more powerful TreeSize Professional as well)

Categories
Audacity Audio Convert FFMPEG FFMPEG Examples Flash Video FLV FREE Freeware MP4 Music Video

How to Convert a Flash Video File (.flv) to MP4 with FFMpeg

  1. Download Flash Video using something like Video DownloadHelper (plugin for FireFox) or KeepVid.
  2. Now you have the file you want; it’s time to convert the .flv file to something a little easier to work with. 
  3. FFMpeg is very easy to use and can be downloaded here.
  4. Open a command prompt.
    • Note: It may be easiest to place the .flv file in the same folder as ffmpeg.exe.
  5. In the command line enter “ffmpeg -i FILE_NAME.flv -ar 22050 NEW_FILE_NAME.mp4”.
    • This basically says “Using ffmpeg, take the file FILE_NAME.flv, change the sample rate (this is the -ar 22050 part, and it makes a world of difference to the audio quality), and output a file called NEW_FILE_NAME in the mp4 format.”

Instead of mp4, you could output an avi, wmv, mpg, or almost any other video file, or eve audio file like mp3.

That’s it. Now you have your converted video file.

Download ffmpeg.exe for Windows (direct link) (8.5MB)

Tips

More:
Categories
CCleaner Clipboard FREE Freeware Google Linux PC Optimization Registry Windows

CCleaner is a freeware PC optimization tool.

CCleaner combines a system cleaner that removes unused and temporary files from your system and also a fully featured registry cleaner!

CCleaner allows Windows to run faster, more efficiently and gives you more hard disk space.

The best part is that it’s Small, Fast and Free!

CCleaner cleans the following Windows components:

  • Internet Explorer
    • Temporary File Cache
    • URL History
    • Cookies
    • Hidden Index.dat files
    • Last download file location
  • Firefox
    • Temporary File Cache
    • URL History
    • Cookies
    • Download manager
  • Google Chrome
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Recycle Bin
  • Clipboard
  • Windows Temporary files
  • Windows Log files
  • Recent Documents (on the Start Menu)
  • Run history (on the Start Menu)
  • Windows XP Search Assistant history
  • Windows XP old Prefetch data
  • Windows memory dumps after crashes
  • Chkdsk file fragments

Advanced Options allow cleaning of:

  • Menu Order cache
  • Tray Notifications Cache
  • Window Size and Location Cache
  • User Assist history
  • IIS Log Files
  • Custom Folders

Application Cleaning:
As well as cleaning up old files and settings left by standard Windows components, CCleaner also cleans temporary files and recent file lists for many applications. Including:

Firefox, Opera, Safari, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Microsoft Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat Reader, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and more…

Registry Cleaning:
CCleaner uses an advanced Registry Cleaner to check for problems and inconsistencies. It can check the following:

  • File Extensions
  • ActiveX Controls
  • ClassIDs
  • ProgIDs
  • Uninstallers
  • Shared DLLs
  • Fonts
  • Help File references
  • Application Paths
  • Icons
  • Invalid Shortcuts and more…

Safety
CCleaner was designed from the ground to be safe and secure to use. It has multiple levels of checks in place to ensure that it cannot delete any useful information or documents you may still need. We also certify that it contains no Spyware or Adware.

High Security
For the super cautious users we also offer secure file erasing. By overwriting the files before deleting them, making it impossible to recover the data.

Multiple Languages
Thanks to the translators, CCleaner is available in 35 different languages:

English, Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech/Slovak, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian Cyrillic, Serbian Latin, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

CCleaner website
CCleaner download

Categories
Freeware FTP Linux Notepad Replacement Notepad++ Utility Windows

Notepad++ – source code editor for Windows (FreeWare)

Notepad++ is a source code editor for Windows. It is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over sixteen million times.[1]

This project, based on the Scintilla editor component, is written in C++ with only Win32 API calls using only the STL in order to increase performance and reduce program size. The aim of Notepad++ is to reduce overall power consumption by using efficient binaries that require less CPU power.[2]

Notepad++ is available only for the Microsoft Windows operating system. However, users can still get Notepad++ to work on other platforms like Linux and Mac OS X, using software such as Wine.

Programming languages
Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and syntax folding for 48 programming, scripting, and markup languages.[2] It attempts to automatically detect the language that a given file uses, using a modifiable list of file extension bindings. Users may also manually set the current language, overriding the extension’s default language. The program also supports autocompletion for a subset of the API of some programming languages.

Users can also define their own language (for syntax highlighting) and its respective API (for autocompletion) by using the built-in User Language Define System.[2] Users may configure the syntax highlighting’s font styles per element, per language, and the resulting formatted script may be printed in full-color (WYSIWYG). Additionally, Notepad++ displays indent guidelines when source code is indented with tab characters, and highlights closing braces, brackets and tags.

Some of its features include:

  • Auto-completion (language and file)
  • Bookmarks
  • Syntax highlighting (and brace and indent highlighting)
  • Drag-and-drop
  • File status auto-detection
  • Regular expression find and replace
  • Split screen editing (“View/Clone”) and synchronized scrolling
  • Zooming
  • Spell checker (requires Aspell)
  • Tabbed document interface
  • FTP Browser (plug-in included in standard installation)
  • Support for various file formats including unicode.
  • Find and replace text or text strings of text over multiple documents simultaneously.

Although Scintilla does not support multiline regular expression search and replace, Notepad++ does contain support for plugins which help mitigate this fact.

Notepad++ home page
Notepad++ download

Categories
Compression Encryption FREE Freeware Linux Utility Windows

7-Zip File Archiver and Compression Utility (FreeWare)

7-Zip (aka 7zip) is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.

7-Zip Features

  • High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
  • Supported formats:
    • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
    • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
  • For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
  • Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
  • Self-extracting capability for 7z format
  • Integration with Windows Shell
  • Powerful File Manager
  • Powerful command line version
  • Plugin for FAR Manager
  • Localizations for 74 languages

7-Zip is open source software. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. Check license information here: 7-Zip license.

You can use 7-Zip on any computer, including a computer in a commercial organization. You don’t need to register or pay for 7-Zip. But you can make a donation to support further development of 7-Zip.

7-zip home page.
7-zip download.
7zip Windows 7 (64 and 32 bit)
7zip Windows 2008 (64 and 32 bit)