Category: Geek Software of the Week

A FREE Partition Manager for your Windows PC!

EaseUS Partition Master Free

“As a Partition Magic alternative, EaseUS Partition Master Free is an ALL-IN-ONE FREE disk partition management tool brought together with three main functions including: Partition Manager, Disk & Partition Copy Wizard and Partition Recovery Wizard.

• Only free for home users
• Highly recommended by over 20,000,000 users around world
• Free and easy-to-use wizard allows professional and reliable disk management
• Free disk partition management tool allows you to extend system partition, settle low disk space problem, manage disk space easily on MBR and GUID partition table (GPT) disk.

Partition Manager

Best solution to create, delete, resize/move, merge, split partitions, etc. to make better use of hard drive capacity.

Resize/Move partitions with data loss, like extending NTFS system partition without reboot to maximize PC performance.

• Safely merge two adjacent partitions into a bigger one without data loss.
• Convert dynamic disk to basic disk and convert FAT to NTFS file system.
• Convert primary partition to logical partition and vice versa: convert a primary volume to logical to create a fifth volume on a disk with 4 existed primary volumes.
• Wipe disk or wipe partition to permanently wipe sensitive data on disk.
• Support up to 2TB partition on MBR disk and 4TB partition on GPT disk.

Disk & Partition Copy Wizard

Easily clone disk and volumes for data protection or disk upgrade, no Windows system reinstallation required.

• Copy partition with fast file-by-file copy to protect your data.
• Copy entire hard disk to another or migrate OS to SSD without Windows reinstallation.
• Upgrade system disk to a bigger one with one-click.
• Support GPT disk/partition copy.
• Provide option to shut down the computer after applying any operation. This function is especially useful when you copy the disk which contains the operating system.

Partition Recovery Wizard

Designed to recover deleted or lost partitions on unallocated space.

• Partition Recovery Wizard allows you to recover deleted or lost partitions from unallocated space due to hardware or software failure, virus attack or hard drive repartitioned.
• Two recovery modes in Partition Recovery Wizard: Automatic recovery mode is easy to use and requires minimal effort; Manual recovery mode gives you full control of the recovery process.
• Support FAT, NTFS, EXT2 & EXT3 partition recovery.”

This week’s Geek Software of the Week is an interesting little utility, once again from Nirsoft, which is been a great supply for Geek Software of the Week utilities, which I try to find each and every week. It’s not easy to find really good, free, software and utilities. So, it’s kind of nice to be able to find a resource like Nirsoft for these utilities.

This week’s utility is very handy! It is called “SiteShoter” and it allows you to grab a screenshot of a website very cleanly to use on your own blog, or website, perhaps when you’re doing a review, or when you want to send a screenshot to a friend to demonstrate the utility of a website that you have found!

Geek Software of the Week: Nirsoft SiteShoter!

“SiteShoter is a small utility that allows you to save a screenshot of any Web page into a file. It automatically creates hidden window of Internet Explorer, loads the desired Web page, and than save the entire content of the Web page into an image file (.png, .jpg, .tiff, .bmp or .gif). You can also use SiteShoter to convert .html file on your local drive into image file.

You can use SiteShoter in user interface mode, or alternatively, you can run SiteShoter in command-line mode without displaying any user interface.”

This week’s Geek Software of the Week is very useful both for private use, and corporate use! Have you ever wanted to know who is actually on your network? That is, all the PCs that are connected, all the devices that are connected, in fact, just who is out there?

This week’s Geek Software of the Week provides you with the answer! It is another great Nirsoft utility that is free both for private and corporate use.

WhoIsConnectedSniffer

“WhoIsConnectedSniffer is a network discovery tool that listens to network packets on your network adapter using a capture driver (WinpCap or MS network monitor) and accumulates a list of computer and devices currently connected to your network. WhoIsConnectedSniffer uses various protocols to detect the computers connected to your network, including ARP, UDP, DHCP, mDNS, and BROWSER.

For every detected computer or device, the following information is displayed: (Some of the fields might be empty if the information cannot be found inside the packets) IP Address, MAC Address, name of the device/computer, description, Operating System, Network Adapter Company, IPv6 Address.

After collecting the connected computers/devices information, you can easily export the list to tab-delimited/comma-delimited/xml/html file.”

This week’s Geek Software of the Week is BulkFileChanger! A cool, free utility to modify file properities!

Nirsoft BulkfileChanger

“BulkFileChanger is a small utility that allows you to create files list from multiple folders, and then make some action on them – Modify their created/modified/accessed time, change their file attribute (Read Only, Hidden, System), run an executable with these files as parameter, and copy/cut paste into Explorer.

BulkFileChanger is a replacement for the old FileDate Changer utility.

System Requirements & Limitations

This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 8. Both 32-bit and 64-bit systems are supported.

If you set a date prior to 01/01/1980, Windows Explorer will not display this date, due to a limitation originally created for old FAT systems. You can still watch an old file date using other file managers like 7-zip, using BulkFileChanger utility, or by right-clicking on the file and choosing ‘Properties’.”

This is a simple, small utility that allows you to fully uninstall applications on a Mac! (And yes, this IS my first GSotW for Mac!) What do you expect! I JUST got a Macbook Pro, and I am geeking out big time! This is just SO cool! You can tell that I am totally having a geekout!

AppCleaner from FreeMacSoft Software

“AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.

AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them.

Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.”

This is a super useful utility! Especially if you don’t have LibreOffice, or M$ Office installed, and you want to look at simple comma separated values (CSV) files!

Nirsoft CSVFileView

“CSVFileView is a simple CSV file viewer/converter utility that allows you to easily view the content of CSV or tab-delimited file created by NirSoft utilities or by any other software, in a simple table viewer. You can sort the lines according to one of the fields, remove unwanted fields and change their order, and then save the result back into CSV file, tab-delimited file, XML file, or HTML report.

Using CSVFileView

CSVFileView doesn’t require any installation process or additional dll files. In order to start using it, simply run the executable file – CSVFileView.exe
After running CSVFileView, you can open the desired CSV/Tab-Delimited file by using the ‘Open CSV\Tab-Delimited File’ option (Ctrl+O) or by dragging the file from Explorer into the main window of CSVFileView.
If the first line of the CSV/Tab-Delimited file doesn’t contain the column names, you should turn off the ‘First Line Contains Column Names’ option (Under the Options menu) before opening the file.
After opening the desired file, you can do the following actions:

• Sort the lines by one of the fields, simply by clicking the right column header. If the column values are numeric, CSVFileView automatically makes a numeric sorting instead of string sorting.
• Remove one or more columns or change their position by using the ‘Choose Columns’ window (F7). You can also change the position of the columns by dragging the column headers into another position.
• Select one or more lines, or select all lines (Ctrl+A), and then saving them into csv, comma-delimited, XML, or HTML file, by using the ‘Save Selected Items’ option (Ctrl+S). You can also press Ctrl+C to copy the selected lines into the clipboard, and then paste them into Excel.

More Options

• Unicode/Ascii Save Mode: By default, CSVFileView saves all files in Unicode, except of csv file, which is saved as Ascii. The reason for saving csv files as Ascii is… Microsoft Excel. That’s because Microsoft Excel doesn’t open properly csv files that are saved as Unicode.
• You can change the default behavior, by going to Options -> Unicode/Ascii Save Mode, and then choosing the desired save mode – Ascii or Unicode.
• Add Header Line To CSV/Tab-Delimited File: When this option is turned on, and you export the selected lines into csv/tab-delimited file, the first added line contains the column/field names.
• First Line Contains Column Names: When this option is turned on, CSVFileView uses the first line of the opened csv/tab-delimited file as the column names list.
• Automatic Numeric Sorting: When this option is turned on, CSVFileView automatically uses numeric sorting when numeric values are detected.

Opening Web Server Log File

With CSVFileView, you can also open a log file of Apache or other Web server that generates a log file in the same format. In order to do that, you should turn off the ‘First Line Contains Column Names’ option, open the ‘Advanced Open’ window (Ctrl+Shirt+O), type \s (space character) in the delimiter field, and ‘[]’ in the quotes field. Choose the log file to open and then press Ok.”

I needed this just this past week to check a WiFi issue on my home network. This is a cool, and useful app! And, of course, FREE!

Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

Overview:
The Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector is a powerful tool with built-in tests enabling you to characterize the integrity and performance of your Wi-Fi network. You can easily gain visibility into your network with this application, which is designed to run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 laptops.

Highlights:

• Simple tool for monitoring Wi-Fi networks
• Runs on Windows 7, Vista or XP
• Free of charge and easy to install software
• Real-time monitoring of wireless network status, traffic and clients
• Detect Rogue APs

Benefits:

• Ensure high performance of your network
• Reduced IT burden with easy to use troubleshooting tools
• Enhance security by eliminating rogue APs
• Provide peak Wi-Fi network performance

OK, forget everything else I have recommended. THIS IS THE ONE! I have stripped everything off all my machines and installed BitDefender FREE on them! Really. Seriously!

BitDefender FREE Anti-Virus

UNBREACHABLE SECURITY
Award-winning, free protection. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition uses the best technologies created in Bitdefender’s labs, internationally recognized for their ability to block even the threats that other products miss.

ZERO QUESTIONS CONFIGURATIONS
Say goodbye to checkboxes to tick and options to OK . Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition takes care of all the threats without bothering you with useless details.

LIGHT. LIGHTER. LIGHTEST!
When we say our product is feather-light, we mean there is practically NO IMPACT on your PC’s performance. Not even a trace of sluggishness, regardless of the age of your system.

NO NAGGING COMMERCIALS
We know you don’t like it when intrusive commercials disrupt your user experience. That’s why Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition only displays discreet, rare messages, with stuff you really need to know.

We should all be concerned about security. That pretty much goes without saying. However, every so often, somebody has to say it! So, “be concerned about security!” There, I said it!

This week’s Geek Software of the Week provides you with the option of not just deleting a file, which we all know, doesn’t really delete the file. What? You didn’t know that deleting a file doesn’t delete the file? Well, it’s the truth! All deleting the file actually does is mark it as deleted in the file table of your computer. The file is subject to then be written over by new data, which will eventually render it irretrievable, but, if you want to be absolutely sure that a file is gone forever and cannot be retrieved, then you need this week’s Geek Software of the Week! And, it is, Free File Shredder!

Free File Shredder

“With File Shredder you can remove files from your hard drive without fear they could be recovered. There are quite a few software tools today for retrieval of deleted files under Windows OS. Those tools, often referred to as ‘file recovery’ software, are taking advantage of shortcoming of Windows ‘delete’ command that we all use regularly to delete files. Actually, the ‘delete’ operation in Windows only removes bits of information from files so they appear deleted in OS. It is easy to retrieve those files using aforementioned specialized file recovery software.

In order to remove, or shred files permanently from your system you have to use a program that is capable of rewriting the files with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often called shredding. That way, the actual content of the file has been overwritten and the possibilities to recover such a shredded file are mostly theoretical.

File Shredder has been developed as fast, safe and reliable tool to shred company files. The author of this program released it free under GNU licence and you are welcome to download File Shredder and use it without any restrictions. File Shredder is simple but powerful program that surpasses many commercial file shredders out there. The Author believes that such a utility should be available to anyone for free and that permanent and safe removal of confidential documents is a matter of basic right to privacy.

In File Shredder you can choose between 5 different shredding algorithms, each one gradually stronger than the previous one. It also has integrated Disk Wiper which uses shredding algorithm to wipe unused disk space.”

Have you ever had to do mindless, repetive things over and pover on your computer? Have you ever wanted to just turn on a piece of software, have it record all your keystokes, then play them back quickly? Well now you can!

This super tiny, no-install piece of software does just that, for FREE!

TinyTask – A Freeware Task Automation Tool

“Our most popular freeware, TinyTask provides quick & easy automation by recording/playback. It is a case study in minimalist programming: the entire program is only 33k — and over 14k are graphics, which means the executable portion is very small and efficient. It is used as the test harness for the “Recording” feature of vTask Studio.

New: now includes an EXE compiler! Turn your recordings into standalone programs. If you were stranded on a deserted island, this is the one program you would want.

There’s no installer, required files, or anything unnecessary; just a tiny program, which doesn’t touch your registry or system folders. Enjoy!”