Windows Secrets’ ultimate utilities list — 2015

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	BEST UTILITIES Windows Secrets’ ultimate utilities list — 2015
	By Tracey Capen Simple, cheap/free utilities are arguably the most important software we install on our PCs. If fact, when Windows users set up a new system, they often start by installing their favorite collection of helper apps. Windows Secrets contributors regularly recommend useful utilities in their columns. Here’s our occasionally published list of essential and interesting apps. Feel free to pass the list along to friends, family, and coworkers who live with Windows.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/best-utilities/windows-secrets-ultimate-utilities-list-2015 (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Symantec removed What’s my computer doing when I tried to download that program today. I know that virus scanners can sometimes be “overly-ambitious” but you might want to download the same program and see whether other virus scanners mark it as suspect.

Gary Cahn

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Symantec removed What’s my computer doing when I tried to download that program today. I know that virus scanners can sometimes be “overly-ambitious” but you might want to download the same program and see whether other virus scanners mark it as suspect.

Gary, the software is safe (homepage and direct download link) and useful.

Symantec have something of a reputation for blocking utilities and other useful products, especially those that might show their own products up. My advice – remove it from Symantec’s quarantine and report it to them as a false positive but you may need to dig deep to find out how to allow it to work with Symantec (Norton) active.

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The newsletter links for EaseUs and Paragon are reversed in the list. At first I thought it was me clicking the wrong link.

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Thank you for the list of top utilities however I don’t believe MetaGeek inSSIDer is free anymore. They’ve been charging $20 for several months if not since year ago. I liked it back when it was free but not really interested at that price for something I use only when setting up a new router…not even once a year.

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Thank you for the list of top utilities however I don’t believe MetaGeek inSSIDer is free anymore. They’ve been charging $20 for several months if not since year ago. I liked it back when it was free but not really interested at that price for something I use only when setting up a new router…not even once a year.

try :
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/5936-inssider.html

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Thank you for the list of top utilities however I don’t believe MetaGeek inSSIDer is free anymore. They’ve been charging $20 for several months if not since year ago. I liked it back when it was free but not really interested at that price for something I use only when setting up a new router…not even once a year.

MaximumPC recommended this:
https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/wlan-software/wlan-scanner-acrylic-wifi-free/

Of course they also had a rec for subscription to a driverupdate program next to that :confused::mad:

Sometimes I wonder why I still have that subscription. I guess I just need some thing to read on the throne and Wired gets skinnier w/ every issue. 😀

:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I have tried several password managers on my Windows 8.1 laptop. None is perfect but I would recommend Sticky Password as the best. Also, File Renamer from Sherrod is invaluable with its very flexible file-renaming options. Finally a question: I used to have a simple drag and drop file encryption utility for Windows 7 but I cannot remember what is was called. Any ideas please?

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I would recommend Sticky Password as the best

The security of SP is less than I would like, it only uses several thousand iterations of the password to generate the encryption key – I currently use over 5 million iterations at a cost of a few seconds additional opening time on slow devices.

Using your database on an additional device appears to require authentication of that device via the SP web site. Not a place I want to be if I’m trying to recover my database after a disaster.

cheers, Paul

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Just a note that the Avanquest Power Desk Pro utility does NOT work win Win 10. This has been confirmed by Avanquest and, apparently, they have no plans to update and make it compatible. I have long used this excellent file manager/utility and it was with enormous disappointment that I finally uninstalled the program. I have read that only the old Version 7 will work with Win 10, but I have not tried it.

Regards,

Harvey

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Just a note that the Avanquest Power Desk Pro utility does NOT work win Win 10. This has been confirmed by Avanquest and, apparently, they have no plans to update and make it compatible. I have long used this excellent file manager/utility and it was with enormous disappointment that I finally uninstalled the program. I have read that only the old Version 7 will work with Win 10, but I have not tried it.

Regards,

Harvey

Just received notification from Avanquest that a Win 10 compatible version of Power Desk Pro 9 has been released and it is available for registered users at a huge discount. I purchased the new version, downloaded and installed it and it works perfectly on Win 10. Yeah +++

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There were two typos in this article. “Changes to the ultimate utilites list” and “they no longer rise to the “indispensible” level.”. Tracey, if you read these comments please run spelll check before you plublish.

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There were two typos in this article. “Changes to the ultimate utilites list” and “they no longer rise to the “indispensible” level.”. Tracey, if you read these comments please run spelll check before you plublish.

The whole article seems to have been “knocked out” in a hurry.
The result is pretty superficial in my opinion. For example, the comment about Last Pass gives no justification for the opinion …”Feel free to continue using it”, Edge pdf reader does not replace Foxit, Adobe or similar and under “Hard Drive”, Macrium Reflect, Aomei Backupper etc, did not even get a mention, despite Imaging being one of the most discussed issues in this Forum.

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I never see Notezilla by Conceptworld mentioned anywhere, but it is excellent and affordable. Wondered if you had ever tried it? I have tried OneNote and found it unwieldy. The actual note part of it is wonderful, but I find the organizational part of it useless. I want to be able to keep a database of notes, organized in a nesting type folder arrangement, but OneNote is not equal to the task. Notezilla is excellent, not only at keeping “sticky notes” on the Desktop, but also excellent at this organizational database of notes. I keep entire documents in a note. It’s much more than a sticky note utility. If you have never tried it before, I suggest you look into it.

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A great free windows repair tool is tweaking.com windows repair. I repair PC’s and this is the best tool in my box. For times when one cannot boot up I use lazesoft recovery suite.

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It appears that Skype (free/paid; Web-based communications) & GWX Control Panel (free; blocks the Win10 upgrade on Win7 and Win8 systems) share the same link. So I can go to Skype but not to the GWX Control Panel… a new link would be nice… 🙂

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It appears that Skype (free/paid; Web-based communications) & GWX Control Panel (free; blocks the Win10 upgrade on Win7 and Win8 systems) share the same link. So I can go to Skype but not to the GWX Control Panel… a new link would be nice… 🙂

How about to the Home page, download link on the right side, below the donate icons?

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I abandoned Avanquest Power Desk Pro several years ago because it took too long to sort and display folders with many files (think C:WindowsSystem32).

I am now using Free Commander XE. It has everything Power Desk had and much more; and it is free.

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also
http://inssider.en.softonic.com/download

Version 2 which maybe the last free. My post above may not be free, 🙁

:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Words fail me when describing everything that is wrong with Avanquest Powerdesk Pro. Free Commander XE should be on the list. Powerdesk Pro should not.

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What’s the consensus on drive imaging / cloning software? I didn’t see it mentioned.

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You can use whichever of the backup programs you like. Windows has one built-in, but many here prefer a 3rd party application.
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//148152-What-s-the-best-free-backup-program

cheers, Paul

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“Tracey Capen,”

An ERROR in your article, “Windows Secrets’ ultimate utilities list — 2015” listing under “Total System” second item “BillP Studios WinPatrol (free/paid).” Just to inform you of a change that took place about December, 2014 with WinPatrol, sold to Bret Lowry of Ruiware. Has it still in full operation (free/paid) and still working GREAT! Also has two (2) other programs out both in 64bit, WinPrivacy & WinAntiRansom also doing GREAT! Presently am using all three (3) on my system. The downloads can be found at https://www.winpatrol.com/mydownloads/

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Original author Unknown

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Interesting that was omitted.

Macrium Reflect Free is mentioned frequently here.

Gizmo’s Freeware has a list…

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-cloning-software.htm

My personal preference is Terabyte Unlimited’s (paid) Image for Windows and Image for Linux.

I also was looking for a simple backup program, and was unsure how it fit into this list. Thanks for this input.
Drive Copy 14 Pro seems a little much for simple backups of my files.
I’ve been a big fan and customer of Acronis True Image, but I’m a couple versions behind now and it seems to have dropped off.

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Please try to find the words, we aren’t keen on unsubstantiated criticism.

cheers, Paul

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Please try to find the words, we aren’t keen on unsubstantiated criticism.

cheers, Paul

Right. I have PowerDesk Pro 9 on a couple of computers and haven’t had any issues with it. Difficult to impossible to diagnose problems when not knowing what they are.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Please try to find the words, we aren’t keen on unsubstantiated criticism.

@Paul T — I wrote a detailed review of Powerdesk Pro on Avanquest’s user support forum about a year ago after I dumped the program in favor of Free Commander. Now both the forum and the review have disappeared and I’m not willing to waste the time to recreate my comments. I used predecessors of Powerdesk Pro going back to the original VCOM Powerdesk. Best of the lot was Novatix Explorer Plus, which was optimized for Win98, generally worked under WinXP, and died with the release of Win7. Powerdesk Pro is hit-or-miss spaghetti code patched together by folks with no real understanding of the original code or its functionality. Since I’m leaving both WS and this forum due to the acquisition by Penton, I don’t feel constrained to say more. Sayonara.

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I used to use PowerDesk but I had to switch to another file manager and I chose FreeCommanderXE.

I purchased PowerDesk Utilities 98 (version 3) from Mijenix in about 1999. At that time I thought it was great. I especially liked the builtin support for ZIP files; they were treated like a folder and I could drag-and-drop files to and from the Zip folder.

Some years later PowerDesk was acquired by Avanquest and in 2007 I purchased the upgrade to PowerDesk Pro 6 ($39.95 retail). This version also worked great until I upgraded my computer to Windows 7 64-bit. I immediately noticed that PDP-6 would not handle the file context menus for 64-bit applications (e.g. AxCrypt file encryption).

So I went back to Avanquest in Dec 2010 and purchased PowerDesk Pro 8.2.1.9 which they claimed supported Windows 7 (x32 and x64). However, it still did not support the 64-bit context menus. Also, it’s performance had gone downhill. It took an exceptionally long time to list a folder with lots of files (e.g. C:Windowssystem32). The poor performance was the primary issue of complaint on Avanquest’s PowerDesk forum back in 2010 and into 2011.

In Dec 2011, I purchased the upgrade to PowerDesk Pro 8.5.1.26 ($14.00), but it still did not support 64-bit context menus. I told Customer Support that the problem with context menus that I complained about a year earlier had not been fixed. Customer support told me in Jan 2012, after several email discussions, that the 64-bit context menu problem was “a known issue” and would not be fixed until release 9 at the earliest.

So I demanded a refund of my last purchase (which they refunded) and have not gone back.

Avanquest, in March 2014, was selling PowerDesk Pro 9 ($39.95 retail) and the features on their 2014 Web Site (http://www.avanquest.com/USA/software/powerdesk-pro-9-500373?meta=PC-Utilities&cat=PC-Tools) were about the same as for version 8, but I was not going to buy it to see if they have fixed the problems.

I am currently using FreeCommander XE (as mentioned in previous posts) because it has all the features I liked in PowerDesk Pro 6 and much more. It has builtin 64-bit context menu support and it opens large folders very fast (re-sorting is fast as well). It has the best folder synchronization I have found. It works seamlessly across network shares (unlike PowerDesk Pro 8.4).

If these problems have been solved in the current version of PowerDesk, I welcome the new information.

P.S. I have copies of emails between myself and Avanquest to document this problem if there is a need for more “substantiation” of claims.

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