StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Okay I feel the need for a thread where you can list your favorite tools and utils.

I will give some Windows stuff to get things started.

PDF reader that starts really fast because I got really sic of acrobat 7 and it wait a half an hour untill I start.

Bsplayer plays your movies nice and fast

FileZilla for all your FTP needs

Ms Powertoys many useful and fun things here

NASA World Wind realy great virtual globe/map of the Earth

Mozilla Great browser

Real alternative play real files without the evil app that comes from Real

So come on list your good stuff!

GNU Octave, a numerical software package that is basically a free version of MATLAB. It is fully compatible with most Matlab .m files and has the majority of Matlab's functions preinstalled. Not quite as powerful or robust as MATLAB, particularly for the plotting/graphics tools, but close.

Miktex, a windows based typesetting program based on LATEX / TEX. LATEX allows the creation of very professional-looking typeset documents and is a godsend for documents involving equations, formulas, and tables. The interface is not that great so I recommend a suitable front end like:

WinEdit, a shareware text / TEX editor for Windows. I use this with Miktex. It allows you to compose your tex document, and then automatically convert it to a PDF, PS files, etc. while still containing a library of TEX symbols. It also works with Bibtex, which is the reference / bibliography version of LATEX. Again, a godsend for composing engineering based / scientific articles involving any mathamatical derivation.

Ghostscript, a PS / PDF viewer.

Spybot S & D, a spyware kill program.

DOS Box, a DOS emulator that is quite handy for playing those old classic DOS games. If it will not run in XP, chances are it will run using DOS Box.

Open Office, a free open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It contains many of the features of Office, but to be honest, I have had issues running this program regarding how the program saves (or doesn't) the formating of my documents. The PowerPoint portion is also shaky in my opinion.

Kerio, a personal firewall for your computer.

EZ-Dicom, a free program for viewing and manipulating DICOM images. Probably best for non-medical grade Ultrasound, MRI, and CT DICOM images. Can step through and animate multi-slice scans.

Firefox, dammit!

Crimson Editor, a very good source code editor and an excellent replacement for Notepad

OpenExpert Have several different programs for accessing certain types of files? Well, this tool will help you considerably if you want to open them with a specific program from the Windows Explorer view. Don't know what I'd do without it.

Edi

OpenRPG, combines IRC style chat with a map and dice rollling feature for pen & paper roleplayers.

Media Player Classic, hands down the best video player I've ever used, nothing else even comes close. And it retains the small, friendly look of the old Media Player before they started calling it Windows Media Player.

portable firefox. have a usb key and want to use firefox on the go, but don't want to reinstall it every time? this'll let you run it off the key and keep your settings, regardless of which drive it's labeled as. full firefox optimized for usb keys.

As for bootable CDs...

Knoppix -- bootable Linux CD with everything you could ever hope to have on one disk

Trinity Rescue Kit -- another bootable Linux CD, but without a GUI. From their site:

The Trinity Rescue Kit 1.1 is a Linux distribution based on Mandrake 9.1 binaries. It is designed to rescue/repair/prepare dead or damaged systems, be it Linux or Windows. It has networking capabilities like ssh, samba and ftp and supports about every network card, disk controller and USB controller. You can use it to repair a Windows 2000 or Windows XP system by setting the checkdisk flag or editing the registry or just reset the administrator password (or any other user). You can even undelete files from an ntfs, ext2 or fat partition.

Provided you know some Linux, TRK can really save the day for you in terms of evacuating or undeleting files, cure a machine of viruses, reset Windows NT/2K/XP passwords, create a disk image over the network, saving lost partitions, etc. ==> see more in Features

Provided you DON' T know some Linux, TRK can still be used f.i. with the custom made scripts like winpass, a script that looks on all local harddisks for a Windows NT/2K/XP installation and uses Pavel Roskins chntpw utility that resets passwords.

On the other hand, TRK can really mess up your day, because all the failsafes are off once you start mounting disks. Be warned! God knows I already screwed up my Win2k once. Just by not paying attention, pure user damage.

Of questionable legality is Super WinPE, a bootable CD with a collection of Windows preinstallation environments that let you run hex editors, virus scanners, and a number of other things all from a read-only Windows environment that basically can't be infected permanently. Since it's of questionable legality, I won't post an actual download link here, but I will say that you can probably find it through Google.

Screen too dark and nothing seems to fix it?

Gamma Panel is an awesome app that lets you assign gamma settings to hotkeys which can then be used at any time (even in game) to change your gamma. Fucking useful little tool for all of us with monitor/graphics card combos that are just plain dark as it overlays its gamma settings ON TOP of your current ones...

Treesize is a really cool tool that will show you at a glance the amount of data each folder contains.

More Stuff!

Video Lan alternative to windows media player

Zoom Player another windows media player alternative.

QCD Player alternative to using winamp. similar interface and functionality.

Okay my current favorite.

CompuSec I am installing this on a number of laptops at my office.

Great for securing data. There is no way in hell that anyone that steals a Laptop is going to get anything out of this, as long as the password is secure.

This application encrypts the entire HD and will ask for username and password before booting the system.

Now the preformance will take a hit about 5% in my estimation, but it is well worth it.

Read this before even thinking about installing! Really I mean it!

ffdshow The only codec you need to DL for popular codec support. Do not taint your system with shitty codec packs which are highly suspect.

HOSTS files - Not sure if this is necessary, but this helps cut down on pop up ads, hijackers, and spyware.

Microsoft Expression Free illustration and graphics tool.

GIMP

Just as good as Adobe Photoshop, but 100% free. For Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

Sometime when trying to clean a computer you get malware which keeps respawning from the grave.

Some tricky ones will even take ownership of the file to another user and monitor the file and reset it back when you try and change it.

If only there was some way to tell Windows to not load an application or extension. But there is(well for 2k/XP Pro/2k3, XP Home is out of luck)!

Run "secpol.msc", "Software Restriction Policies", right click and select the "new security policies"(it should be the only option in the rightclick menu). Then browse to "Additional Rules", right click -> "New <rule type> rule" and you can determine how you want to identify the file (md5/SHA-1 hash or path, etc), and windows will never run the file again.

You can then go to "Software Restriction Policies" and double click on "Enforcement", and determine if it applies to just the main executable or all libraries loaded by it and some other minor stuff.

This allows for preventing an application to run were you can not remove the file or alter the permisions for some reason.

For Windows XP onwards,
SetSAFER allows you to force a program to not run as administrator, even if you are an administrator. (Originally from here but recompiled for .NET v1.1 instead of v2.0 beta)

No matter who runs it, the program will never ever have administrator privileges untill this is undone.