Just a quick post for my loyal readers.

My current installation of Windows XP is now grinding to a halt. (Not sure if that is the right expression as whenever a Windows OS reaches this stage, in my experience, it is in fact resulting in endless disk activity and very little else

Anyway the time has come to reinstall an earlier backup, update with the latest “Windows Security Updates” and then reinstall the essential software.

This gives me a great opportunity to share with you all the details of the software I currently have installed, the programs I consider essential and the ones I won’t be bothering with in future . Of course this will be my very subjective view but I hope it will be of some use to you all in your decision making. A you probably know by now one of the main aims of my Blog is to help you in making decisions about what software and particularly Freeware to install. So the next couple of pots starting next week will cover this aspect.

So I intend to produce a table of my currently installed software, whether I will or won’t reinstall it and the reasons why!

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What Is It?

Recuva is a Portable Freeware Utility designed to very simply find and recover deleted files including photos on your hard drives or removable media including flash memory cards used in digital cameras, PDA’s and mobile phones, etc. It is deceptively simple to use but very effective and with a little experimenting surprisingly powerful. Hopefully this review will reveal a couple of things not obvious in a casual trial.

Having recently permanently deleted (i.e not sent the files to the Recycle Bin) a small test set up then decided I needed to re-run it with the same settings I used Recuva to get back the files. I have used several free and commercial utilities in the past for file recovery and was immediately impressed with the ease of use of Recuva, this prompted me to write this post.

Why Would You Want It?

If you have ever accidentally permanently deleted a file or suffered some hardware failure that has partially corrupted the media or file referencing/indexing system then the first thing you need is a file recovery utility. With a Windows OS a lot of file writing goes on behind the scenes so you should attempt to recover files immediately.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Recovers Deleted Files
• Works with fixed drives and removable Media

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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What Is It?

WatchDOG monitors active processes and performs a restart of that process if it is stopped or alternatively starts a different process.

Why Would You Want It?

Have you ever wished you could automatically restart an application if it crashes or is accidentally closed? Or have you ever needed to start a process when another finishes. WatchDOG is a small application that will do this for you in a simple, convenient and user friendly way.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Monitors all active programs/processes
• Starts a defined process when another stops OR
• Restarts the stopped process

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Identify Where the Data Is

This is part of the series :

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data – Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

The aim of which is to present good ways for backing up data in various different time frames, depending on the importance of the data and the need to restore it quickly or not.

Disclaimer

By necessity the information given is a simplified version of the situation you will normally encounter for a Windows OS and is based around XP. The infinite number of ways in which installations of a Windows OS can be varied followed by all the different ways in which programs can be stored or the places in which personal files can be written makes it impossible to be totally precise or to cover all eventualities.

What’s the Problem?

In order to develop a backup plan you first need to know what you should be backing up and where it is located. Unfortunately Microsoft and program developers for Windows based systems have found numerous different places to store program and personal data. Many of the ways are inconsistent and are often not intuitive, meaning that just because one program stores its data in a subfolder of a particular directory doesn’t mean that program X will do the same. In fact there are numerous different locations where program data may be stored and the same program may store different types of information in different locations. Confused? You will be .

Ultimately if you want to have a full recovery backup for a PC hard drive failure of other catastrophic data loss you will be interested in all the information necessary to restore your PC. However, for this type of backup you probably don’t need to know to much about where the data is stored except for which drives and partitions it is on. For backups targeted at particular personal files or programs you have loaded you need a lot more information.

What are the Different Types of Data & Where are They Kept?

For the purposes of this series of articles I am going to simplify the process and define the different types of data into four different groups:

1. Operating System
2. Applications/Programs
3. Applications/Programs Settings
4. Personal Files

In reality there will be a certain amount of overlap between groups and some data that may arguably fit into another area altogether.

1. Operating system data resides (principally) in it’s own drive and folder. This will normally be on the C drive in a folder called Windows but both the drive and the folder name can be defined differently when the operating system is installed. To check this you can start the System Information Utility (Start>Program Files>Accessories>System Tools>System Information – System Summary option – The Windows Directory and System Directory items show you where the data is kept. By the way this utility gives you a lot of details about the system) . This is where all the main programs/utilities/drivers and the system registry reside.

The Windows Registry, from my personal perspective, is a complete nightmare. Have you ever watched one of those crime programs where they spend days looking for body parts in a landfill site, well that’s my mental picture of the registry. Not only that if in your search for a something important and you move a half eaten can of bake beans a mile away then civilisation as we know it ends and cannot be recovered! OK that’s a bit of an exaggeration but years of experience have shown me that it takes about 40+ man hours to reinstall a Windows system plus all the programs and settings for one of my average setups (assuming I have reasonable backups of data files but not the system itself). Trying to sort out registry problems always takes longer and is never perfect.

2. Applications/Programs generally reside in a folder called “Program Files” on the C Drive which is normally the default location in a system that has been installed as standard. (Remember though that you can install a Windows system to almost any fixed drive and name the folder to anything you want) Occasionally some programs will install into the C Drive under a folder name associated with the program. Generally the program installer utility will ask you where you want to install the program so if you prefer to install all your programs on another drive or in another folder you can do this. BUT beware quite often the program will still install some “common” library functions or drivers elsewhere. For instance these may be under C:\Program Files\xxxxxx for the library files and in the Windows System folder for drivers. So already there is a problem in knowing where all the data resides for the programs you install.

3. Applications/Program Settings – Program settings can be stored in many places and frequently are. A single program will frequently put data in more than one place. At one time (long, long, ago before MS decided everything should be stored in the registry or user settings folders) programs stored information about themselves in terms of user configuration and last used settings in a file (*.ini) associated with the program or maybe some sort of data file (often a *.dat file) in the programs own folder or subfolder. This seems a pretty good idea to me in terms of backup, if I save the programs folder then I have essentially a complete backup of that program, if everything I need to run the program the way I want it is in there and nothing is in the registry that seems to be a great solution. If I am in a multi user environment then what’s the problem? Just name files or have pointers within files that deal with each user. Finally keep the files in a simple text format so that you can see what’s going on or (for the “power user” change anything that is obviously wrong) – why not?

So generally this type of data will be stored in:

1. The Windows Registry
2. User Settings folders (Generally C:\Documents and Settings/All Users or C:\Documents and Settings/”username” where username is your login name)
3. Files kept with the program installation folders or subfolders
4. Somewhere else (unusual but not unknown)

4. Personal Files - Personal files will generally be stored under the My Documents/My Pictures/My Music etc. folders and subfolders which are within the Documents and Settings folders for the user on a Windows system (C:\Documents and Settings/”username”). However, individual programs may choose to store files created elsewhere or the user may set folders in which to store particular files. Files may be stored in other folders in the Documents and Settings area that are designated by the program being used which may be under My Documents but also may be an independent folder. At other times they may (unusually) be stored in a folder on the main drive (generally C:\xxx) or in the Program Files subfolder for the program. Where you have control over the place files are written then some thought needs to be given on where you store these files and the reasons for this will be given in a future post in this series – Where to Store Your Original Data.

Portable Programs/Applications

Regular readers will know that I am a great advocate of portable applications. One of the best things about them, when they are properly set up and implemented is that all the essential data is located within a single set of folders and subfolders relating to the program. Where some data may need to be written elsewhere say to the registry or Startup folder then this is non critical and should preferably be included in an data file within the program folders so that it can be automatically replicated when the program is copied/ to another system and started for the first time.

Summary

1. Different data files for different purposes are stored in a variety of places and formats
2. Windows and program developers control where much of this data is stored
3. The storage of critical data files may be (is?) inconsistent in terms of where and how it is stored
4. Where the user has control over where data is stored this needs careful consideration in terms of accessibility and backup planning
5. Using Portable programs/applications generally gives better control over data location and backups

Other Relevant Posts:

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data – Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

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Reading a gHacks post earlier today reminded me that I have been using TaskBar Activate for quite some time on my main home PC. It is so unobtrusive that I had almost forgotten that it is there.

What Is It?

TaskBar Activate is a small utility that controls the autohide timing of the windows TaskBar. It is a simple utility last updated in 1999 but it still fulfills a very useful function in preventing the Windows taskbar appearing instantly every time your mouse pointer hits the bottom of the screen. It also provides similar functionality for other windows taskbars that are docked to any edge of the screen plus a couple of other useful features.

Why Would You Want It?

To help control the Windows Taskbar autohide actions, in particular it can be annoying when the taskbar inadvertently appears when you drag the mouse to the bottom of the screen(or other edge, depending on how you have windows bars set up) .

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Delays the appearance of Windows autohidden taskbars

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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What Is It?

A small and efficient utility to manage the amount of CPU time being used by the programs currently running on your PC. This is achieved by a simple set of rules that you can control through the Process Tamer GUI.

As I have said before I am a huge fan of the Donation Coder utilities and this is one that I have installed on all of the PC’s/Laptops I use on a regular basis.

Why Would You Want It?

Some processes(programs) use the CPU very intensively when they are running or maybe only at certain times. When this happens other programs that you are running have less CPU time available and therefore respond slowly. Sometimes you may have to wait for relatively long periods of time before the program you are currently working with will respond or it behaves very sluggishly. Process Tamer will help to overcome these sort of problems in a simple and intuitive way..

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Allows you to set rules for the process priority of running processes based on individual process names or global rules.

Summary:

• Provides a way of automatically changing process priority
• Allows the setting of explicit rules for individual processes
• Shows feedback on changes being made in real time
• Optional Log of changes as they occur

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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The original post has been updated and can be found here:

JkDefrag Option GUI – Much More Than Just a GUI

Updated 7 March 2008 with comments/corrections from Emiel Wieldraaijer, the developer

What are the Technical Details & Compatibility?

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Fast and Simple Disk Defrag with JkDefrag

Defrag Those Hard To Get At System Files with System File Defragmenter (Sysinternals PageDefrag v2.32)

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

Why I decided to Write This Blog

What are the Tags?

Technorati Tags: Freeware, My Free Review, PenDrive, Portable Freeware, Portable Freeware Portable Application, PortableApps, Pro Reviewer, Programs, Software, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP

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Why You Need Them

No it’s not because your data may be stolen it’s because you may commit the crime of not protecting it!

We all know the importance of a proper strategy for backing up our precious data and how this needs to be done to a regular schedule. Yet, how often do we forget or put off creating the backup until "a bit later". This then becomes days or even weeks and then along comes the PC crash, a powercut an OS glitch, a hard drive failure, the accidental overwriting of a file. Even with a good backup strategy properly implemented he worst of this is that it is often very difficult to tell exactly what you have lost until much later when you can’t find that precious photo or the resume that you spent a day carefully crafting.

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Updated 7 March 2008 with comments/corrections from Emiel Wieldraaijer, the developer

All updates except minor typos are shown on red

What Is It?

A front end or GUI to make the setting of options and running of Jeroem Kessels wonderful JkDefrag program a breeze for the user. Not only does it accomplish this in a comprehensive way but it also provides a GUI for PageDefrag and a scheduler for running JkDefrag. This GUI is written by Emiel Wieldraaijer and the GUI automatically downloads the latest version of JkDefrag and PageDefrag when the program is started the first time.

Why Would You Want It?

JkDefrag is a simple but powerful defragmentation tool. The standard windows GUI does not allow the setting of the multiple options in the command line version nor can it be simply scheduled with out a third party scheduler. This program makes it easy for the user to set options and schedule the running of JkDefrag through a simple and familiar Windows interface. It also wraps PageDefrag into the package and provides additional useful functions as well as links to several useful resources through the help menu.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• User Interface for JkDefrag
• User Interface for PageDefrag
• Installer for JkDefrag and JkDefragScreensaver
• Scheduler for running defrag utilities
• System “Cleanup” option
• Option to automatically check for updated version of JkDefrag

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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What Is It?

JKDefrag is a very popular and highly regarded disk defragmenting tool written by Jeroen Kessels. It provides a quick and simple way to defragment disks or anything that looks like a read/write disk to the Windows operating system.

Why Would You Want It?

Because it will speed up the time your PC takes to boot (start up) and programs will run more quickly, particularly if the system RAM is being fully used. (When the RAM is fully used by the OS and programs the remaining information has to be written to the hard drive which is very much slower).

Overall, hard drives are a relatively slow storage medium (memory) to read and write to. The process is slowed even further if the files are fragmented into many pieces in different places over the disk surface(s) The Windows operating system automatically writes data to the disks to available spaces (sectors) and apart from some special files does not try to make them into one single continuous file. This means that both the writing and reading processes need the read/write heads to move to find the data and of course the disk has to spin round for the relevant data to be under heads. Defragmenting can make the process far quicker by placing the data so it can be read more quickly and efficiently.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

JKDefrag defragments the disk(s) while the system is running normally. However, some files cannot be defragmented due to restrictions of the operating system or the rights of the individual user. The JKDefrag website has plenty of information on defragmentation as well as tips on how to use and get the best out of the program. Tips include how to make the best use of your hard drives to maximise speed and how to ensure the maximum number of files are defragmented.

Summary:

• Defragments file on read/write disks
• Runs normally under the the operating system
• Uses the Microsoft API (so very safe in operation)

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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