Tune It Up! A Guide to the Best Free System Utilities
August 27th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 4 CommentsTweet This
The main applications that many web workers live in all day may often come from big software houses, but there are a lot of very good system utilities online that you can get for free. Some of them do simple things like keeping your system startups as efficient as possible, others can help you optimize your operating system’s interface for the way you work, and more. In this post, I’ll collect some very handy utilities that can help you work more efficiently–at no cost to you.
Windows Utilities. Microsoft itself offers a set of useful, free applications that very few Windows users take advantage of. They’re called PowerToys, and come from outside developers although they are listed with their download links on Microsoft’s web site. Among the PowerToys I’ve used that have been extremely useful are Tweak UI, for customizing your Windows interface and configuration, and Virtual Desktop Manager, which lets you manage up to four desktops. If you’re running Windows Vista, I also recently wrote about a free version of Tweak that gives you a slew of really handy tools.
Tune it Up. PC users who have installed a large number of programs on a given system can benefit from running RegCleaner. It’s a very easy-to-use way to eliminate obsolete registry entries from software that you installed long ago. On the topic of keeping your system clean, I’m also a big fan a little app called StartupRun. Its sole purpose is to display the list of all applications that are automatically loaded when you boot Windows. You can easily specify that you don’t want particular applications to start automatically, and it even highlights in pink any adware or spyware that you may be loading.
Check Your Hard Drive. I know very few people who regularly do disk defragmentation, even though it can have a profoundly positive effect on system performance. The reason most people don’t do defrags regularly is that, because of today’s huge drive capacities, they take forever. However, you can use a tiny, free utility called HDTune to very quickly check the health of your drive. That way, you’ll know when you need to bite the bullet and do a full defrag.
For Mac Users. If you’re on a Mac, one of the best collections of free, tiny applications for tweaking your system and user interface is found at TinyApps.org. I’ve used a tool there called AppCleaner and found it to be an ideal way to uninstall software I don’t want to use anymore. If you don’t back up your Mac regularly, iBackup is also an easy, free way to work and play more safely.
Do you have any tips on good, free system utilities?
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I’d also recommend crap cleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com
Its a great clean up utility for all bad things such as left overs in registry…
The best free system utilities for Windows are from SysInternals. They’ve been bought out by Microsoft, but their tools are still available and free (Sysinternals website — redirects to a page on the Microsoft website).
I particularly like:
Process Explorer — a much enhanced Task Manager
Autoruns — check and edit what runs at startup/logon. It’s really quite comprehensive
Filemon — check which apps are accessing which files, in realtime
Regmon — same as filemon, but for registry entries
pagedefrag — defrag your pagefile for faster system performance
handle — find out which application has a file open
rootkitrevealer — check for rootkits
junction — make one directory an alias for another — useful for accessing one directories from two places, or providing short paths for often-used directories (c:\documents and settings\anthony\my documents\web_stuff\project1 -> c:\projects\project1)
There’s plenty of other tools, and I’ve used most of them at least once.