Have you ever downloaded and installed a new Windows utility and wondered why Windows didn’t have its features inbuilt? I have. Over the last few years, I’ve tried hundreds of apps that have solved common inadequacies in Windows.

This is a list of 37 handpicked Windows utilities that I think will help us in fixing the missing pieces in Windows. Give them a try – these utilities will beat those common Windows annoyances. Good luck. Before reading this post, make sure that you also check out our post on lifesaver windows utilities as well.

If you think an app deserves to be in this list, please use the comments section to voice your opinion. I’ll be glad add more to this list.

Windows Utilities

These FREE programs do not require any installation and can be run directly from a USB drive. Keep some useful apps handy while on-the-go!

Handy programs to put on a USB stick. at SnapFiles.com

Security and privacy are some of the major concerns these days while choosing a web browser to use. So much so that all the major players in the “browser wars” are providing or developing a private browsing mode.

Firefox with the myraid of add-ons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox security and privacy addons that you should install for safer browsing.

10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons

Yes, not the usual list with extensions that you’re already using. These are 10 very useful, not-so-popular Firefox extensions that I’m assuming you don’t know.

10 Useful Firefox Extensions You Probably Don't Know About

FoxTab is a Firefox extension that brings innovative and attractive 3D tab management to Firefox.
Firefox users can now benefit from a new level of web surfing experience.
FoxTab enables grouping, filtering, closing and switching between tabs quickly and easily.

There are 5 fascinating eye candy layouts which you can choose from:

Stack	- Thumbnails are 3D-stacked one behind the other.
Wall	- Thumbnails are displayed on a concaved virtual 3D wall.
Grid	- Thumbnails are aligned on a grid.
Row	- Thumbnails are arranged horizontally.
Carousel	- Thumbnails are placed and accessed circularly..

FoxTab supports all the major OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

FoxTab

I started this list as a collection of free awesome software for Windows that I'd found over the years.

Features that help inclusion to the list: No-cost, open source, useful, resourse-light, good UI, and most importantly, me liking it.

I have a local mirror of the open source programs here.

List of free awesome programs for Windows - WikiPaul - Paul Swanson's wiki

Mozilla Firefox has built-in features to save Flash movies. When viewing a web page:

1. Right-click on the web page;
2. Select View Page Info;
3. Switch to the "Media" tab;
4. Select the Flash movie you want to save;
5. Click Save As

Save Flash in Firefox and IE

With the help of converters and viewers from Office Online, you can share your Microsoft Office files with people who have different versions of Office programs, or even with people who don't have Office installed.

Converters allow you to open files created by people using different versions of your Office programs.

Viewers provide a means for people who don't have Office programs to see your work. You can provide them with the appropriate viewer along with your Office files.

Office Online File Converters and Viewers - Downloads - Microsoft Office Online

When’s the last time you didn’t have an application hang on you during shutdown? XP waits a grueling 20 seconds by default before trying to kill services that are still running when you’re trying to get out of the office, but you can knock this down to as low as zero with a quintet of registry hacks.

Make the following changes in regedit:

• Under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop, change the values for WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000 (this is the wait time in milliseconds).
• Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, change the values for WaitToKillAppTimeout and HungAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000.
• Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control, change the value for WaitToKillAppTimeout to 1000 or 2000.
• Use the same value for all three settings.

From: 25 Most Popular Windows Tips: The Best Explained and Worst Debunked

Recently I was faced with a situation where I had an automatic update that wouldn’t install. To try and troubleshoot this issue, I needed a way to download the update so I could install it manually. Since Microsoft doesn’t offer such an option, I had to look elsewhere for help. Luckily, there is a program that was created to do just this.

Windows Update Downloader can manually download any update for Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, Office 2003, and even Exchange 2003. It’s also great to use in conjunction with a Windows Vista Unattended Installation CD and Windows XP Unattended Installation CD so the updates are installed with the OS. Just follow these steps to get started.

Step 1: Download Windows Update Downloader and install it.

Step 2: Download the Update List for the product you wish to download updates for and double click it to automatically import it.

read full artaicle here : How to Manually Download and Install Windows Updates · EmergingTechs.com

…whow, meltmail.com has been mentioned on lifehacker.com. Thanks for that, too.

We’ve covered boat loads of similar disposable email applications, so Melt Mail isn’t breaking any new ground, but since some services won’t allow you to register with popular temporary email addresses, it’s worthwhile to have another option in your arsenal. Besides, the dead-simple interface is a nice touch.

Melt Mail. Your temporary e-mail forwarding.

Welcome to Dumb Little Man! Each week we provide a handful of tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.

15 Most Useful Productivity Tips for Windows Users

Our pursuit of increased productivity is endless. Right when you think that you are at your peak productivity level, new ideas or technologies pop out of nowhere and force you to reconsider your process.

Listen, no matter how good things are, there are always things that can be tweaked to perform better. Take the PC for example. Out of the box, a Windows PC can be very unproductive since most of the applications that come pre-installed aren't very functional. In this post, I'll show typical Windows users how they can double or even triple their productivity.

15 Most Useful Productivity Tips for Windows Users | Dumb Little Man

Yesterday I reinstalled Windows on a laptop for one of our users at work. When the installation was complete, I popped in the driver CD to begin the process of installing the drivers that Windows didn’t install. For some reason the CD only contained two of the eight drivers that I needed. Normally, tracking down the right driver can be a huge annoyance, especially when your devices are showing up with generic names like PCI Device, Video Controller, System Device, or Unknown Device. But with the help of a little utility, I was able to find all of the drivers that I needed saving me lots of time and frustration.

This little utility is called Unknown Devices and it works with Windows 95, 98, 98se, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. It’s also a portable application so it requires no installation.
When you run it, Unknown Devices immediately lists out all of the devices that Windows cannot find a driver for and tells you what each one is.

How to Find Drivers for Unknown Devices in Device Manager · EmergingTechs.com

Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time!

Introduction
PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment ("Windows PE"). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft Windows PE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement included in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use.

Please do not contact Microsoft for support on the preinstallation environment that has been created by PE Builder!
Microsoft does not provide support for PE Builder or for the preinstallation environment created by PE Builder.

The PE Builder program (pebuilder.exe) runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/BartPE. It does not run on Windows NT4/ME/9x.

To avoid any confusion, the bootable CD generated by PE Builder should be called by its nickname "BartPE"!

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform.

Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

foobar2000

1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type 'systeminfo'. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type 'systeminfo > info.txt'. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).

2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run... and type 'gpedit.msc'; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care -- some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only). An alternative is to press SHIFT-DEL.

3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.

All 20 here: More XP Tips - How2Setup

PortableApps.com Suite™ is a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you're ready to go.

Choose Your Download 1.5.2 for Windows
Starting at only 1MB Download Details

- Support PortableApps.com's development and hosting

PortableApps.com Suite and PortableApps.com Platform | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives

Easy Duplicate Finder is a completely FREE Software.

It contains absolutely NO ADWARE, NO SPYWARE, NO REGISTRATION, NO POPUPS, NO MALWARE or other unwanted software

1. Search for true duplicates (files with same contents)
   Powerful search engine with fast files check
   Full binary (byte-by-byte) comparison
   
   
2. Flexible Scan settings
   Search files by masks
   Size conditions & skip zero-length files option
   
   
3. Find duplicates from selected folders or drives
   Add multiple folders/drives for scanning
   
   
4. Safety
   Protect system files and folders
   Move files to Recycle Bin or delete duplicate files permanently
   Mark selected duplicates by renaming them with adding prefix to file names - to test which files is safe to delete
   
   
5. Convenient user interface
   
   
6. Duplicate file management - remove only unnecessary duplicates
   Select files manually (for deletion) or use flexible selection options
   Rename duplicate files with prefix/postfix
   Move duplicate files to folder
   Open folder containing selected file
   Show file properties
   Open file with associated program
   
   
7. Full Unicode support
   Support for files with Chinese, Japanese, Arabian etc names
   
   
8. Export list of duplicates to HTML document or to TXT file
   

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

1. OS: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista
2. CPU: 400 MHz or higher
3. RAM: 128 MB or more
4. Hard Drive: 5 MB of free space

Easy Duplicate File Finder - Remove Duplicate Files

I have compiled a list of 15 free online tools that will help you greatly as a tech. I’m sure that there are other good ones that I have left out so please feel free to post the ones that you like as well.

15 Online Tools that You Will Come to Love as a Tech · EmergingTechs.com

Convert online the PDF document to Word file for free.This site allow you to convert online the pdf file to the word file.


Convert pdf to word - Convert pdf to doc - Convert online pdf to word

Even after the launch of Windows Vista, Windows XP is still very popular Operating System worldwide. There are probably hundreds of tips and tricks for Windows XP but most of them have nothing to do with a common user. So I have listed 11 tips which can prove to be extremely beneficial for users.

1. Block any website you want, without any software

A website can be easily blocked without using any software. Just follow these steps
a). Browse C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc
b). Find and open the file named “hosts” in notepad
c). There you will see a line “127.0.0.1 localhost”
d). Just under this line add “127.0.0.2 www.sitenameuwanttoblock.com” , without quotes.
Save the changes and the mentioned site will no longer be accessible.

See all of the tips here: 11 Most Useful XP Tips and Tricks

You can almost ignore the question of whether XP’s Indexing Service slows down your computer. The fact is it doesn’t do much good anyway. Indexing is supposed to help Windows keep better tabs on files, but it does a terrible job of it and offers the user no options for configuring what gets indexed. It’s almost beside the point that it can slow your system—sometimes only a little and sometimes to an outright crawl.

Even Microsoft acknowledges that the Indexing Service can cause hard drives to thrash and that it “uses lots of pagefile space and lots of CPU time”—in fact, Microsoft often recommends disabling it. Note, however, that Vista’s integrated search and indexing system is considerably improved.

There are several ways to turn off XP’s Indexing Service. The most thorough is to open the Control Panel, open Administrative Tools, then open Services. Scroll down to Indexing Service and double-click it. Change the Startup type to “Disabled.”

25 Most Popular Windows Tips: The Best Explained and Worst Debunked

portable freeware,portable software,software for usb drive

The Portable Freeware Collection - Latest entries

Most of us are very familiar with Windows XP and have explored almost all the programs that come default with XP.

Here are four programs you most probably didn’t know existed on your computer.

4 Programs you didn't know existed on your computer | Alfred's Tech Blog

Desktops and Laptops purchased from manufactures like DELL, IBM, etc comes with a serial number(or service tag) and a model name. If you ever loose this information, then you can use MS DOS commands to retrieve the information

To retrieve serial number of the computer run the following command

wmic bios get serialnumber

To retrieve model name of the computer run the following command

wmic csproduct get name

Find Model Number and Serial Number Of Your Computer Using DOS Commands | Tech Dreams

The recession is hitting everyone hard and money is tight. That doesn’t mean that can’t get the most out of your computer. There are so many great free applications that can help you do just about anything. I’m going to take a look at 22 applications that I use all the time with wonderful results.

I’m going to identify the free applications that I use in the following categories:

• Communication
• Internet
• Productivity
• Multimedia
• System Utilities

I have my personal favorites that I’m going to talk about, but those are not your only options. I’ll also list any other viable alternatives that I’m aware of for each category.

VitaminCM - Nourish Your Mind » 22 Most Useful Free Applications for your PC

My flash drive works pretty hard, so I've spent a lot of time gathering a reliable, powerful set of portable tools that allow me to work hard and play hard, even if I can't do it on my own PC.

Here are two dozen apps that I always have at the ready.

24 Killer Portable Apps For Your USB Flash Drive