Annoyance Busters
24 great utilities and tools that smack down hassles with data, security, Windows, and your hardware.PC World contributor Michael Desmond is a freelance writer based in Vermont.
Do you suffer from high blood pressure, migraine headaches, and a near-irresistible urge to throw expensive computer gear out the window? Your PC may serve up more disappointments than the Boston Red Sox in a late-September swoon, but hope is not lost. An array of useful utilities and tools can do much to smooth over your system's most glaring flaws. And you may be surprised to learn that many of the fixes for these niggling annoyances can be had for free.
Slowdown Busters
Sluggish PC performance can test the most even-tempered person's patience. These utilities help provide a boost.
Clogged Windows
Over time, Windows can become so stuffed with spurious, forgotten, and corrupted Registry entries that it's amazing the operating system works at all; determining what exactly is slowing the works can be supremely difficult. RegSeeker gets things flowing again by cleaning out Windows' rusty pipes. Like other Registry cleaners on the market, RegSeeker can identify and then change or remove invalid or unused entries. Of course, every Registry tweak comes with an element of risk, so use the program's Registry backup feature before making any changes. Free
Painfully Slow Acrobat Loads
Adobe Reader 6 could be one of the slowest-loading applications around--and that's really saying something. The fault lies with all of the sundry plug-ins that Adobe Reader insists on loading every time it launches--plug-ins that most people never use. Put some snap back into Adobe Reader's step with Adobe Reader Speed-Up, which prevents those resource-hogging plug-ins from loading. You can even customize the utility to load only select modules. Without further ado, Adobe Reader launches in an instant. This must-have utility works with Reader versions 3.0 to 6.01. Free
Windows Bulge
We all know the frustration of Windows bloat. The operating system is loaded with programs, services, modules, and applets that most of us don't need and probably won't ever employ. An incredibly handy utility, XPLite lets you strip out unwanted Windows XP features and unnecessary modules. The result is a lean and mean operating system that loads more quickly, responds faster, and occupies significantly less space on your hard drive. You'll also find versions that are compatible with Windows 98 and Windows 2000, which could extend the life of aging PCs. $40
Dawdling Video Downloads
Why does capturing video from MiniDV camcorders have to be so frustrating? Many applications that handle this task are complicated, confusing, and unstable; some, like Windows Moviemaker, force you to use their own proprietary format. Thank goodness for Scenalyzer Live. If not for it, you might be staring at countless hours of unedited footage. This snappy little applet does one important thing remarkably well: It grabs DV-format video off FireWire-equipped digital camcorders and captures it to hard disk. On top of that, the program also provides automatic scene splitting--by detecting breaks in the original recording--to help you find and work with specific portions of footage. No more wrestling with wretched, crashing bloatware. Now you can simply launch, capture, and--at your leisure--edit. $39
My Favorite Fixes: Easy Uploads and No Spam
Barry McBride, Web site manager, Mentor, Ohio.
The Annoyance: I didn't know what busy was until I left my consulting job at Accenture to launch a fan Web site and a monthly magazine about the Cleveland Browns football team. I found myself constantly jumping in and out of FTP programs to upload articles and layouts to remote servers. I spent precious time battling spam, too. Despite the improved filtering in Outlook 2003, the flood of garbage threatened to overwhelm my inbox.
The Fix: I installed WebDrive, a nifty FTP program that lets me place remote drives and folders directly within Windows Explorer. No more fussing with a clumsy FTP interface or with tools like Microsoft FrontPage--I just drag, drop, and transfer. To deal with spam, I rely on SpamNet. It flags and deletes unsolicited e-mail messages for me, using an automated feedback mechanism to identify spam broadcasts as they emerge on the Internet. I couldn't work without it.
Data Glitch Busters
Illustration by Mark Matcho
Is Windows Frozen?
So you cleverly stashed your home PC behind a desk or in a cabinet to clear some needed floor space. But now you can't see the LED that indicates hard-disk activity, so you can't tell whether Windows is frozen or whether the system is simply waiting for data to spool off the disk. Diskmon helps eliminate the guesswork. This tiny utility sets up shop in the Windows system tray and blinks whenever the disk is working--just like the activity light on the front of most PC cases. It also keeps detailed tabs on the activity, producing a staggering log of file reads and writes. Free
Disk Space Dilemma
MP3s, video files, digital photos...this stuff can fill up hard disks fast, and it can be tough to tell where the data is going. Sure, if you hover a mouse pointer over a folder in Windows XP, a tool tip pops up showing how much data is in that folder and its subfolders. But to see precisely where all of the data is, you need JDisk Report, a utility that produces a highly detailed, graphical overview of files and folders on your hard disk. You can call up a pie chart that displays a great overview of the folders consuming the most disk space; dive into a detailed table that reveals file names, dates, and sizes; or explore an easy-to-peruse chart that shows the distribution of files by size ranges. Free
What's Really Going On?
Have you ever wondered what's happening behind the scenes in Windows? The Windows Task Manager--which you access by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del--shows a terse list of applications and processes running on your PC. Unfortunately, you can't tell what these processes are doing or where they come from. Process Explorer sheds some much-needed light on those mysterious background apps, permitting you to drill down to see what folder an application started from and what resources it is using. This utility can also help you identify spyware and other nefarious background processes. Free
Can't Find Duplicate Files
A 250GB hard disk can hold an awful lot of files--and the task of preventing duplicate files from piling up and getting misplaced can be difficult. Regrettably, Windows Explorer won't let you compare two directories side by side. Xplorer2 Lite is a Windows Explorer replacement that makes it easy to compare directories, sniff out duplicate files, and find the most recent version of files across directories. This is an especially terrific tool for people who need to sync the contents of desktop and mobile hard drives. For $25, you can obtain Xplorer2 Pro, a version that adds advanced searching, FTP and Web syncing, and subfolder disk usage statistics. Free
Hardware Hassle: Scattershot Peripheral Hookups
Photograph by Marc Simon
Clutter Busters
Illustration by Mark Matcho
Hidden Windows Features
Sometimes Windows seems to be doing its utmost to hide information from your inquisitive eyes. Whether you want to scope out CPU utilization, check on free hard-disk space, or see right now how much data is moving to and from your system, Windows forces you to plunge into the Control Panel, the Task Manager, and various applets in search of the lowdown. One handy solution is to install StatBar, a sleek and slim status bar that tucks in neatly at the top or bottom of your screen and puts scads of controls--including program launch buttons, a master volume slider, and Winamp audio controls--right at your fingertips. Free
What's the Date Today?
Want to know the time? Easy: Look at the little time display in the Windows task pane. But if you want to check the date, you have to hover the mouse pointer over the readout until a tool tip appears--and half the time, the tool tip doesn't come up at all. TClockEx dispenses with extra mousing by displaying the current time, date, and day in the location where the Windows clock used to sit, in the format of your choice. It will even display CPU utilization and memory loading. It's tiny and efficient--you install it, set it up once, and never fiddle with it again. Free
Window Disorder
Toggling between application windows can be a slippery business. Before you know it, you have a dozen separate program windows open, all stacked up in a pile and obscuring your work. AllSnap helps clean up the multitasking mess by making the edges of your application windows sticky. Drag a browser window toward the upper-right corner of the screen, and AllSnap nudges it into the corner. Pull two Word document windows side by side, and AllSnap clicks them together. This little utility turns Windows from point-and-slide to point-and-click. Free
Renaming Files Can Be a Drag
With 1-4a Rename, you can replace portions of text or truncate file names in batches.
As a result of the cryptic file names that digital cameras tend to assign to photos, many photography enthusiasts must laboriously rename dozens of files at a sitting. 1-4a Rename takes the drudgery out of those makeovers, letting you rename multiple files (even in different folders) with the aid of its controls and an impressive set of filters. You can strip out a specific string of characters in unnecessarily long file names and replace it with, say, today's date; or you can remove capitalization, spaces, and nonstandard characters. The basic mode has a few useful rename filters, while the rather intimidating Expert Mode should meet the needs of all but the most sophisticated users. Free
So Many CDs, So Few Drives
Every time the kids want to play Legoland, I find myself scanning multiple bookshelves, sorting through stacks of jewel cases, and scrounging around in desk drawers in search of the game's wayward CD. Alcohol 52% is a CD emulation program that lets you store on your hard drive images of the CDs that you use frequently. The software then tricks Windows into thinking that the CDs are in the drive when you launch the programs. Gone is the frustrating ritual of hunting for CDs--that is, if you have the disk space to hold all of them. Each CD that you store on the hard disk can consume up to 700MB of space. If you want to burn backups of your favorite CDs and DVDs, check out Alcohol 120% ($50). Now when Junior scratches a disc, it won't spell disaster. $35
Harware Hassle: Too Many Power Adapters
Photograph by Marc Simon
Infection & Hacker Busters
Illustration by Mark Matcho
Too Many Passwords
The Generate button in Password Safe creates complex passwords that are difficult to crack.
So many Web sites and networks require a log-on that people frequently resort to using easy-to-remember passwords that are a cinch for computer-literate lowlifes to crack. It doesn't have to be that way. Password Safe is an encrypted database that securely stores all your user name and password entries in a single place so you can copy and paste complex passwords into Web pages and system log-on screens. The only password you have to remember is the one you use to access the scrambled Password Safe database. Most important, with this tool you can afford to use long and complicated passwords--the types that are highly resistant to being cracked--for all of your various log-ons. Free
The File Isn't Really Deleted
BCWipe can cleanse your hard drive according to standards set by the U.S. Department of Defense.
When you delete a file in Windows, it isn't actually gone. Only the pointers to its locations on the hard disk (and the first letter of its file name) have been removed. Consequently, anyone who has access to your computer can come along with a half-decent file-recovery tool and pull up all sorts of valuable, confidential data from your disk. BCWipe clears out files for good by overwriting with random data the portion of the disk that contains a given file. You can adjust wiping levels to suit your degree of paranoia, from quick one-pass wipes to military-grade cleansings that will overwrite files half a dozen times or more. Also, BCWipe scrubs swap files and free disk space, both of which can house bits and pieces of private data. You can schedule relatively time-consuming operations--such as overwriting large swaths of the disk--to happen overnight. $40
Stop Tailing Me!
Are you sick and tired of having your every move logged by nosy Web sites? Or having your files, including the sensitive ones, silently stored by Windows--for months on end--in cryptically named, hidden subfolders? IE Privacy Keeper is a compact utility that wipes the slate clean every time you start or exit Windows. Cookies, temporary files, lists of recently opened files, Internet Explorer URL history, AutoComplete lists--all of these and more are banished from your hard drive. You can even instruct the applet to delete specific files or Registry keys to ensure that every trace of your movements is lost. When you select the Secure Delete option, IE Privacy Keeper will overwrite the data that it deletes with random bits, thereby foiling outsiders' attempts to recover old files without your permission. Free
Flash Finagling
Not only can Flash animations make an unwelcome (and unexpected) racket when they launch automatically, but they can also bypass most pop-up blockers--which means that a Flash file carrying malicious code has the potential to infect your computer with a virus. TurnFlash offers a trustworthy cure for this vulnerability: It enables you to toggle the Flash playback capability in Internet Explorer on or off anytime you want. When you arrive at a site where you would actually like to see the Flash animation play, all you have to do is click the taskbar icon. Afterward, if you click the TurnFlash icon again, Flash playback in IE will be disabled once more. It doesn't get much easier than that. Free
Hardware Hassle: Weak Wireless Signals
Photograph by Marc Simon
Online Bugaboo Busters
Illustration by Mark Matcho
Frustrating FTP Interfaces
Once you click the Connect at Login/Startup box, WebDrive links to the remote server.
If you frequently publish files to Web sites or upload files to remote servers, you probably use file transfer protocol tools a lot. But even the best FTP programs rely on laborious log-ons and clunky interfaces that make connecting and transferring files from a local hard drive harder than necessary. WebDrive changes all that, displaying remote directories as just another folder in Windows Explorer. Simply enter the FTP server information in the WebDrive interface, and Explorer updates with a new, mapped network drive showing the contents of the remote server. The remote drives and folders you want to access are where you need them, all the time. $40
Faulty FTP Transfers
Speaking of FTP transfers, how many times have you needed to get someone a file--absolutely, positively right now--but found yourself stymied by downed mail servers or arbitrary file-size limitations on e-mail attachments? Unless you or your cohort runs an FTP site, you might be out of luck. Pumpkin TFTP lets you send files to another person, without requiring e-mail servers or FTP sites. You just find the local file, enter the target IP address, and then set up the connection with the required ID and password information. You can also enter the file location and name, along with a source IP address, to grab files from remote systems. Free
Network Nonsense
More Windows PCs are networked than ever before, and yet Microsoft has barely lifted a finger to help users sleuth problems and mysteries with their home networks. If you want to check whether a computer at a particular IP address is working, you still have to open a DOS box to run the aged ping command. It's all so...so...1986. Angry IP Scanner lets you ping a range of IP addresses, and it returns ping rates, host names, and active IP addresses--all wrapped up in an attractive, easy-to-read Windows interface. It's the perfect utility to use when you need to figure out what PCs are actually connected to your home wireless network. Free
Annoyances by the Numbers
40% Percentage of Web users who say pop-ups are the most annoying ads --Jupiter Research
29% Percentage of Web users who say spam is the most annoying ad type--Jupiter Research
233 Number of adware applications that were in existence in June 2004 --PestPatrol
50% Percentage of rebate seekers who had problems or got no rebate--Aberdeen Group
25% Percentage of pop-up and pop-under ads blocked by software--Jupiter Research