Must - Have Software

File Scavenger: A common problem faced by most people is recovering lost files. File Scavenger scans your hard-disk partition and gives a list of deleted files, which you can recover to another partition. It also lets you recover files from broken RAID arrays or spanned volumes. A filter lets you scan for certain types of files only, for example *.doc Word files. A special search mode scans through completely erased hard disks caused due to virus attacks or system crash.

www.quetek.com

Super File Encryption: This is also a common problem on shared systems, where people would like to protect certain files from being accessed. Super File Encryption lets you password protect your files. It encrypts files using an algorithm and the files can be only accessed by supplying the correct password.

www.fileencryption.org

TreeSize professional: This utility scans your hard-disk partition and gives you a pie-chart or bar-chart view of the space taken up by different files and folders on your hard disk.

www.jam-software.com

Registry Medic: With frequent installations and un-installations of programs, the Windows registry becomes a mess. Windows registry is vital for your system to work properly. Registry Medic can help you clean up your registry and repair invalid entries.

www.iomatic.com

Zero Popup: While browsing the Web, pop-ups can be really annoying. To stop such pop-ups, Zero Popup is an excellent utility. Not only browser pop-ups, it lets you control messenger pop-ups, banner ads, spy wares and web spies. By blocking such pop-ups it also saves precious bandwidth.

www.tooto.com

Handy Backup: This is a real useful program as it lets you make quick back up of your files over the network, FTP or on to CD-R/RW drives. It also has a synchronizing component that synchronizes any local folder to a file server or an ftp server. With this you don’t have to manually copy your local files after making any changes to them. Just work with local files and synchronize them to the server with this utility.

www.handybackup.com

Outlook Spam Filter: This is a small plug-in for outlook to sort out spam from your normal mail. It sits as a toolbar in outlook and has friends’ and enemies’ lists to sort spam. It also lets you report spam to their e-mail address thus helping in automatic filtering of mails.

www.outlook-spam-filter.com

Nelson E-mail Organizer: It is an automatic e-mail organizer which groups mail by date, by sender and by type. The software works by cataloging your Outlook mail and you can have the complete functionality of outlook within it without even opening outlook. Mail are automatically grouped in folders like today, yesterday, this week and last week. The bulk mail folder sorts out all spam mail.

www.caelo.com

Zip Genius: A really good utility that manages almost all compression formats like zip, tar, rar, gz and tgz. It also has an ftp client to directly zip and upload those files to an ftp server. The software adds a plug-in in the file and folder context menu to directly compress or uncompress files.

www.zipgenius.it

IP-Tools: This is a network-monitoring software to monitor your network. It has a name scanner to scan computer names in the LAN. A port scanner to scan open ports for vulnerability, a ping scanner to check for system availability, a trace utility to trace the path to a host, whois to check for domain names, a time synchronizing tool, telnet client, etc.

www.ks-soft.net/ip-tools.eng/

Tune Up Utilities: This is a set of several system utilities. It includes a disk cleaner to remove unneeded junk data from the hard disk to free up disk space. Icon Engineer to change important system icons and their appearance. Memory Optimizer that monitors the system in the background and frees up memory whenever necessary to increase the performance of your system. Process Manager provides an excellent overview of the system’s activity. Registry Editor for editing Windows registry. It also lets you bookmark various registry values while performing a search. Rescue Center that keeps and eye on the changes made to the system and registry and lets you undo those changes. Shredder permanently deletes files and folders from your system preventing them from being recovered by unauthorized person using data-recovery software. Uninstall Manager is like the Windows Add/ Remove programs but gives better information about the programs installed.

www.tune-up.com

Download Accelerator: To restore broken downloads, download manager is one of the best download mangers. Not only does it restore broken downloads but it also speeds up downloads by using multiple download connections.

www.speedbit.com

Sisoft Sandra: This is a complete system information tool. It gives information about your hardware, the motherboard, disk drives, CD/DVD drives, CPU, graphics card, RAM, cache, network. It also gives you information about your Windows environment such as winsock, IP , DirectX, fonts, DSN, printer and fax.

www.sisoftware.net

Nero: For anyone who needs to burn CDs/DVDs, Nero is an indispensable tool. Nero lets you burn different types of CDs such as bootable CDs, Mixed mode CDs, CD Extra, video CD and super Video CD. It also has an image drive which installs virtual CD-ROM drive to directly read CD ISO images without burning it on a CD.

www.nero.com

Adobe Reader: Anyone who needs to read PDF files, needs Adobe Reader. www. adobe.com

PDF Factory: This software installs a printer driver on your system to create PDF files from any printable file. To make a PDF file, just print the file, from say MS Word or Notepad, through the PDF printer and you will get a PDF file created as the output. A good application for them who want to publish and post or e-mail files.

www.fineprint.com

SmartFTP: It is a free FTP client. www.smartftp.com

Zone Alarm: With growing Internet-based viruses, it becomes essential to protect your systems. Zone Alarm is a personal firewall that gives you complete control over your system’s Internet access. It blocks anyone from accessing your system on the network and also controls which application from your system are accessing the Internet.

www.zonelabs.com 

LinkStash: People with heavy Internet browsing often tend to forget the names of websites they visit. LinkStash is a bookmark manager that works with IE, Opera and Netscape browsers and manages all your bookmarks centrally.

www.xrayz.co.uk

NetSwitcher: Mobile users who have to connect to different networks face a problem of changing TCP/IP settings while switching between networks. NetSwitcher lets you maintain multiple profiles such as home, office and client office with different network settings. The next time you move between networks, change your settings with the click of a single button.

www.netswitcher.com