Free Software

Piriform Ltd has today released CCleaner 5.03 and CCleaner Portable 5.03, the latest revisions of its popular Windows maintenance tool.

The build brings new support for cleaning Google Chrome IndexedDB, a technology which websites can use to persistently store data within a visitor’s browser.

Bitdefender has announced that its stand-alone Bitdefender Adware Removal Tool has been updated to remove the Superfish root certificate, while also "disinfecting drivers or executables that have been affected by the malware".

It’s not even a week since news broke that the adware had been bundled on Lenovo systems for some time, and already bigger scares are appearing, but if you’ve not yet checked your computer for problems then the new build does at least make it very easy.

The average PC user doesn’t need to pay much attention to device drivers, these days, and that’s probably a good thing. Windows supports most devices natively, locates plenty of drivers on its own, and a driver disc (or a download) should add support for everything else.

If you’re managing a lot of systems, though -- or maybe you’d like to skip the usual driver installers and their unwanted extras -- then you might want to simplify the process with the open-source DriverBackup!.

Install the free version of a commercial program and you expect to find some restrictions, but undelete tools often go a little too far. You might only be able to recover 250 files, perhaps. With a maximum size of 100KB. And only on Tuesdays. You know how it works.

Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition is refreshingly different. Okay, it’s strictly for non-commercial use, but aside from that the only notable missing feature is one you won’t find in most of the competition, anyway (HFS+ file system data recovery).

Buy even the most basic consumer scanner and you’ll probably get some very capable scanning software with a pile of image processing features. But while that’s great if you’re looking to scan a photo, it might not be so useful if you just need to quickly scan a document and send it somewhere else.

NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2) is a straightforward alternative, an open source tool which is designed to scan documents to PDF, TIFF and other file types "as simply as possible".

Kaspersky Software Updater is a free stand-alone tool which regularly checks for updates to critical software, alerts you when any are discovered, then downloads and installs them with a click.

It’s not entirely clear which software is supported, but from our tests it seems to cover the main internet-facing applications and components: browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe Air and so on.

Send a set of photos to someone and they might sometimes want to see when they were taken. This might be possible by checking their properties or otherwise displaying EXIF/ IPTC data (if they're tagged correctly, anyway), but that's not exactly convenient.

Photo Date Stamper simplifies the process by watermarking a batch of images with their "taken" date.

If your PC network is misbehaving then you could turn to the standard Windows troubleshooting tools. But they’re mostly console-based, not exactly comfortable or convenient to use, even if you can remember all their various command line switches.

NetCrunch Tools tries to make your life a little easier by combining 11 troubleshooting and information tools into a single straightforward application.

Unnecessary duplicate files can waste hard drive space and cause all kinds of odd PC issues, which is probably why there are so many programs designed to help you track them down.

Duplicate & Same Files Searcher sounds like it's just going to be yet another "me too" duplicate finder, but no -- there are some interesting differences, and they're obvious from the very beginning.

If your hard drive space is a little lower than expected then your first instinct might be to uninstall a few applications, maybe use CCleaner to remove any leftover junk.

If you really want to understand where you drive space has gone, though, there’s no substitute for analyzing it properly with a tool like Folder Size.

Malware uses many tricks to avoid detection. Sometimes this involves ultra-complicated, super-stealthy, rootkit-like Windows hooking. But often it’s no more advanced than giving an EXE or DLL file a much less worrying extension (virus.exe > virus.txt, perhaps). A simple technique, but maybe enough to get past you and your antivirus software.

MZreveal is a tiny free tool which can expose this hidden code by scanning the content of every file, listing any executables it finds which don’t have an EXE or DLL extension.

StripPhoric is a free tool which removes JPG and PNG metadata, reducing file sizes, and -- by removing details like geotags -- perhaps protecting your privacy.

The program is extremely basic, and has a few annoyances, but if you’re looking for ease of use then it’s hard to beat.

TorrentRover is a torrent search tool for the Windows desktop.

Do we really need this, we wondered? Surely it'll be packed with adware? But no, there's nothing to worry about, it's portable and payload-free.

Your antivirus software claims to be working all the time, monitoring every file you access for any potential threats -- but is this really how it is? EICARgen can help you find out.

This tiny freebie has a single task: to generate the EICAR Anti-Virus Test File on demand. EICAR isn’t an actual virus, not even executable code (it’s just a few characters of text), so it can’t harm your system in any way. But it is something which all antivirus programs should detect as a threat, making it very useful for testing.

Windows error messages are never exactly clear, and Windows Update is a particular offender. One common alert complains that "Windows could not search for new updates", displaying the cryptic code: "80072EE2". Which it then helpfully translates as "Windows Update encountered an unknown error".

Error Lookup is a portable free tool which can help by translating error codes into a (hopefully) more meaningful text description.