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• Aida32, hardware display and diagnotics
• CoolTaskBar to sort out the mess (particularly in Windows 2000)
• FreshUI, tweaking utility
• TweakUI, same as FreshUi, but different options, these two combined give you a lot of different options.
• PowerToys, tweaking utilities. In particular the [Send file name to clipboard] and other options which I cannot work on Windows without.
• Get everything from SysInternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Tons of great command line tools too. For instance, ever wanted to delete a file only to get a "There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use" message ? Where Windows doesn't even know for sure if the file is in use or not. Get Process Explorer from SysInternals.com and type the file name in its [Find][Find Handle] menu. Close or kill the appropriate process if necessary.
• Desktop Manager or FlashDesktops, gives you 4 desktops just like on Linux.
• Alt-Tab Replacement, Gives a screenshot of window Alt-Tabbing, useful when you have multiple unsaved docs open, etc...
• OpenCommandWindowHere, right-click on folder option to open command prompt window at that folder, useful for deep or complicated folder names
• Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple but not that useful.
• NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple but does not seem to work on all types of network interfaces. Online Eye Pro works better and has lots more options, it's based on WinPCap just like Ethereal (see below).
• TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple.
• WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more.

Network Utilities

• Xmanager, excellent X-windows manager.
• FreshDownload, Download Manager
• ssh, scp, wget, rsync... comes on CYGWIN
• Putty (and friends), ssh client and other utils (but ssh is part of cygwin and works just as well)
• WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows (scp is part of Cygwin but this is easier to use)
• NetScanTools a GUI interface for most command line tools also found in cygwin
• WebDrive, mount various types of network protocols (ftp, http, ssh) as local drives, buggy but useful (RiverFront)
• POPfile the best spam remover I've found so far (works with outlook express and any app)

Hi, I recommend AIDA as a Sysinfo tool. Free and powerful, can even run in batch mode.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

Ziad

A great, free, Windows program is AIDA32. It gives lots of valuable info. It's not perfect, but it's constantly in development and improvement. Up until about a week ago there was a DOS/16-bit version available, but due to lack of demand it was discontinued (sadly). Another ok program is PC-Config, which is no longer being worked on, but it's pretty good. And NSSI is really pretty nice as well.

Check those out.

As others mentions, memtest86 and knoppix are invaluable tools.

Other tools you might be interested in;
Aida32 basically lists all of your devices, drivers, wmi software entries, pci devices, etc. for windows - needs an install, though.

OnTrack sell Easy Recovery Professional; the "file repair" options are pretty crappy, but for serious, near-forensic recovery on fscked up filesystems, ERP is a fine tool. Some of OnTrack's software (i.e. SMART tests, usually) may be licensed by the manufacturer of your harddrive, so check those pages out.

SiSoft Sandra is recommended a lot, but I don't find it offers a lot of diagnostics, though it is prone to crashing.

On windows, you might want to check out the Event Viewer, hidden in the Computer Management section of the (classic) Control Panel -- it will list all sorts of errors and notifications, kind of like /var/log/messages ;-)

aida32 is a very good tool to get information about your hardware and software... (similar to sandra)
And it is free.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

Free for personal use, businesses must register. Well worth it.

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip or7 Zip 3.11

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 6.20

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 or Pegasus Mail 4.12

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 or FileZilla 2.2.1

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70or Trillian Basic 0.74E

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp

Graphics viewer (other

Finding installed software isn't that tricky with the right timesaving tools on the Windows side. One tool I have found invaluable for a number of reasons is a little program called Aida32. It does a nice system inventory with all hardware, software, a good number of the licenses/keys, and various other bits of information. It is a free product and quite honestly it is better than most of the software doing the same thing (SiSoft Sandra for instance).

On the linux side someone mentioned before that it would be simple to just standardize on an install or switch to a distribution that handled auto-updates from a central repository (could be an internal system). Just set all the clients to access this one system and run a cron job (use emerge for gentoo, apt-get for debian, urpmi for mandrake, etc) to seek and download said updates on a regular basis and point all your machines to that machine as your update repository. Makes life a little simpler at least.

AIDA32 is handy for finding out what hardware is in a system as well as licence codes for Windows and other software (except Office 2000 - I don't think anyone's found out how to retreive the product key).
It's all handy info for a reinstall or hunting down drivers.