or Several Good Reasons for Using Portable Firefox
What is This all About?
 
Making it easy to use Firefox with different settings for different users and/or different purposes as well as being able to quickly and easily create Firefox backups.
A standard installation of Firefox keeps the programs and data (your profile with all the settings, cookies, cache, etc) in separate areas of your hard drive. Normally (unless you have specified a different location at installation or in your OS Setup) Firefox programs will be installed under C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ and the data will be stored under your Microsoft “Documents and Settings” area with a path like - C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\.
With a Firefox Portable installation you can have all your Firefox programs and data under a set of folders such as:
- C:\Firefox_Main
- C:\Firefox_Small
- C:\Firefox_Blogging
Or you could have:
containing
-
- Firefox_Main
- Firefox_Small
- Firefox_Blogging
and C; can be substituted for any other drive including memory sticks/flash drive and network drives.
Not only is this easy to quickly backup everything using standard backup software or by simply copying the folder structure using standard copy and paste, but it is completely portable using a portable hard drive or USB flash memory.
This is how have Firefox set up on my main PC and I transfer this complete or in part to other PC’s at home and work on a removable hard drive or flash memory.
(Click on Screenshots to enlarge where necessary)
You could even run Firefox over an Internet connection using remote connection software like Logmein or even Windows Home Server, although unless you have a fast broadband connection this could be very slow and you would be better pulling (downloading) the installation to the local machine.
What Do I Do?
Well, I have already said some of the things that can be done based on what I am already doing. The next screenshot shows the files and folders under my Firefox Portable folder:
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What Is It?
Unlocker is a program that will unlock or release files and folders that have been locked by the system. It is simple to use as a standalone solution when a locked file or folder situation occurs or it can run in the background and monitor for problems.
Warning
Deleting some files may make the system crash or unbootable, or it may stop certain applications working. So proceed with care. Only use Unlocker on files you are sure it is safe to move or delete. The file/folder was originally locked for a good reason so be sure that it is now safe to unlock. As always make sure you have adequate backups of your system and data. .
Why Would You Want It?
Locked files or folders are generally ones that are currently opened by an application or a system process. They are automatically locked to prevent another process from changing them (when they may be altered by the process that already has the file open). Sometimes the lock is not released due to a malfunction or crash somewhere in the system or with an application. This leaves a file that cannot be moved or deleted.
A typical error message will show:
(Click on pictures to enlarge where necessary)
Other typical error messages may say:
- Cannot delete file: Access is denied
- There has been a sharing violation
- The source or destination file may be in use
- The file is in use by another program or user
- Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use
Why Do I Want It?
Unlocker provides a simple and unobtrusive way for me to unlock files quickly and easily when a problem occurs with moving or deleting a file. This may be using Windows Explorer or a file manager, Teracopy, Duplicate Cleaner or some other utility. I generally have Unlocker (Assistant) running in the background on my main PC’s and laptops.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Unlocks files whose locking handle is set
- Can be set to monitor for lock file/folder error messages
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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What Is It?
Duplicate Cleaner is a nice utility to manage duplicate files on your PC or laptop and across your network. There are plenty of similar utilities of varying complexity, Duplicate Cleaner works relatively quickly and efficiently and the ability to work across the network is very welcome.
Why Would You Want It?
Over time it is likely that many files can be duplicated in various places, particularly when creating backup sets for security reasons. There is a balance between keeping your data safe which means there may be several backups in different locations taken at different times, the time available to manage the data files you need to keep and the available storage you have. A way of managing or at least locating the duplicate files is an essential utility in the data management process.
Warning - You should take great care when deleting files flagged as duplicates as they may be essential to the running of your system. At the very least backup the files before you start and if you are doing anything with files in system folders it would be a good idea to clone the partition. Duplicate Cleaner provides options to Move files to a different folder or deleting them to the recycle bin. It may be best to use one of these options and then delete the files permanently at a later date. Using a folder name like “Duplicate Files To Delete after 2008-09-01” may be helpful.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Finds Duplicate Files
- Selection of drives and folders across a network and PC
- Provides alternative methods to select duplicates to be managed
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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Posted by: Barry Cleave in Freeware, Portable Freeware, tags: Freeware, Hotkeys, Programs, shutdown tools, Software, Start Menu, System Commands, Utilities, Windows, Windows Controls, Windows XP
What Is It?
The Wonderful Icon (TWI) is a small utility that sits in your system tray (windows notification area) and gives you access to numerous system commands, Windows manipulation/placement functions, hotkey options, sounds options, shutdown options and a user defined Start Menu. This is an amazing little application that has been around for a long time and never seems to have gotten the recognition it deserves.
Why Would You Want It?
If you want a simple, single click system tray icon that gives you access to all sorts of system commands using the mouse or hotkeys, combined with all sorts of user definable options then this is the one for you!
Don’t be put off by the lack of development in recent times and lack of a fancy GUI with icons - this is simplicity and functionality defined 
It appears that The Wonderful Icon even works with Vista despite it the fact that it hasn’t been updated since Vista was released. N.B. I haven’t tested it on Vista, I am relying on comments posted elsewhere.
Why Do I Want It?
Because it gives me access to so many different functions in a system tray menu that I can define myself as well as defining items to be activated by Hotkeys. In fact I thing the most amazing thing about The Wonderful Icon is that it hasn’t been more widely recognised.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- System Tray Menu
- Hotkey Functions
- Select Sounds
- Access Common Tasks
- Access Common System Commands
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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What Is It?
A wonderfully simple utility that safely removes (ejects/unmounts) USB disks from a Windows system in the way that the MS Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility should but doesn’t.
Why Would You Want It?
Because the inbuilt Windows Safely Remove Hardware utility is a triumph of obscurity and poor design. Why? – I will tell you.
 Left click on the Windows Safely Remove Hardware tool icon is the system tray and what do you see:
(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)
Now unless you have previously assigned drive letters to particular USB drives and then can remember those assignments you have no idea which drive is which.
Or you can right click-
Then left click on the Safely Remove Hardware menu item
(Why – As it is the only item wouldn’t it be a triumph of the programme developers art to have it open the program window straight away?)
This shows the Safely Remove Hardware Window
Well this is even less helpful until you click on the “Display device components” checkbox
and now you get far more information, in fact enough to be confusing but not enough to easily work out which device is which!
Compare this with the USB Disk Ejector utility window:
Now this isn’t perfect (See What Could make this Better? at the end of this post) but it certainly is a lot less cluttered and far more informative.
Why Do I Want It?
I use several different USB drives often at the same time. These include portable drives, memory sticks and flash card readers. Trying to “Safely Remove” one of these often requires opening “My Computer” to help determine which drive is allocated to each drive letter before running the Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility. Finally getting totally fed up with this process I searched for a tool that would do the job more efficiently and found USB Disk Ejector.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Lists the currently mounted USB drive devices.
- Allows these devices to be ejected (unmounted )
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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So What is This About?
I have been running Windows Home Server for about 9 months. I always intended to write some posts about my experience but hadn’t got around to it yet. Anyway, I woke up a couple of mornings ago and switched on the PC in my bedroom (while lying in bed - yes how sad is that!!) to be greeted by the Red WHS (Windows Home Server) system tray icon warning me of a “Network health is critical” Problem.
Well nothing startling about that as WHS seems to find I have a disk problem fairly regularly despite the fact that the system is less than a year old and built from good quality components including the disk drives. In fact the health warning relating to disk drives has been going on since the first couple of weeks so I treat it as just another “MS annoyance”. I just take the appropriate remedial action and it goes away (but now I am wondering if it is an indicator of some deeper problems with WHS like the well known data corruption bug!).
So I opened up the WHS Console to find the following:
(Click on screenshots to enlarge if necessary)
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What Is It?
A very simple and uncluttered utility to measure the distance between two points on your PC or laptop using the mouse. BitRule from Charten allows you to measure in pixels, inches, centimetres or pica units. It also gives the angle between the two points in degrees.
Why Would You Want It?
Screen measurements can be useful to try and determine the distance on a map or the scale of a value on a bar chart or graph. It can also be very useful when laying out web pages for a website or blog.
Why Do I Want It?
I use it for all of the reasons mentioned above. I have also used it with photos to try to estimate distances and heights by relative measurements of near and far objects where one of these has a known height or length.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Measures on screen distances
- Gives the angle between points
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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What Is It?
Yesterdays post ( Remove Duplicate Emails and Other Items from MS Outlook with ODIR ) detailed some problems with Outlook duplicating emails if there is a timeout on the Internet connection while downloading your emails from the server. One tip that can help with this problem is to increase the timeout interval for the server connection.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Sets the Server Timeout on a per email account basis
Pros: What’s Good?
- Part of Outlook Account Settings
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What Is It?
ODIR - Outlook Duplicate Item Remover by Vaita, will search the individual folders in your MS Outlook setup and remove any duplicate items that it finds based on a simple set of rules.
Why Would You Want It?
If the Outlook email download process is interrupted part way through then it does not register that any emails have been received from the server. This can be caused by a crash in Outlook or the operating system, it can also happen due to Internet interruptions or a slow connection timing out. Other causes for duplicate items can be synchronisation with PDAs and mobile phones or the use of synchronisation software. Finding and removing these duplicates manually is a slow and painstaking process, ODIR provides a freeware method of making this much easier.
Note: For maximum safety I would advise that you backup your Outlook files before using this utility
Why Do I Use It?
I first started using ODIR 1 or 2 years ago when I had some problems with my ISP and several timeouts when downloading emails caused a lot of duplicates to accumulate. Recently I had problems with Outlook crashing ( see Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files ) and this weekend I had some more problems with timeouts due to my Internet connection misbehaving. This again resulted in a lot of duplicates that needed to be removed.
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Simply removes duplicate items in:
Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
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Popularity: 17% [?]
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Posted by: Barry Cleave in Windows OS, tags: Free Reviews, Hints & Tips, Impartial Review, Independent Review, Taskbar, Tips, Toolbars, Windows, Windows Crashes, Windows Explorer, Windows XP
What is This all About?
Most users will think of Windows Explorer (Not Internet Explorer the browser application) as the program they use to access their files. In fact Windows Explore is much more than this, in simple terms it provides the graphical user interface(GUI) between the user and the operating system. It gives access to the all the programs including the control panel and various system utilities such as System Information, System Restore and the Management Console. If Windows Explorer freezes or cashes then you no longer have access to the Windows Taskbar and the Desktop icons amongst other important ways that you interact with your PC to make it do what you need. (Windows Explorer is also referred to as the shell which interacts with the core operating system).
Tip 4 may be the most important Tip as this helps to protect against fatal Windows Explorer crashes
Why Do You Care?
For a multitude of different reasons Windows Explorer may freeze or crash at any time. Windows XP is certainly more stable than earlier Windows operating systems but it still happens, particularly if you load lots of programs and give your PC a heavy workload. This is another reason why it pays to reboot your Windows OS fairly frequently, as the longer he system runs in any one session the more likely it is that it may freeze or crash.
Once Windows Explorer is no longer available then how do you access such things as the Shutdown Menu or your open programs that are still running?
What Can You Do?
First of all, except for the most inexperienced of users of a Windows OS will be familiar with CTL-ALT-DEL (or the 3 finger salute) where you press all 3 keyboard buttons at the same time as an emergency “get out of jail” solution.
By the way – if this doesn’t immediately work give it a minute after which you will need to use the powerswitch or restart button with all the possibilities of loosing data or file corruption. So only ever do this as a last resort!!!!
When you use CTL-ALT-DEL from a User Login/Password system you see the following screen:
(Click on Screenshots to enlarge)
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Popularity: 19% [?]
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