Articles about Know Your PC

Passwords are supposed to protect files from unauthorised access, but the sad fact is that just about any password can eventually be cracked. That’s bad news if you’re looking for bulletproof protection, but should you suddenly forget a password you might be grateful that your file isn’t as secure as you might have thought.

Password-recovery tools are plentiful, but freebies are thin on the ground. Many of these don’t even work, but one that does -- within certain limits of file format and password length -- is Free Word and Excel Password Recovery Wizard 2.09.

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Paragon Software has released Drive Backup 11 ($95.95 for Workstation), the latest edition of its business-oriented tool. And the headline improvement this time is new sector-level incremental disk imaging, which, Paragon says, has boosted the efficiency of this backup type by 200%.

Elsewhere, file-based backups can now be encrypted by a password. There’s the option to back up your data to an FTP/ SFTP server. Support for working with virtual disks has now been improved, and new asynchronous data transfer means backup performance has considerably improved.

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We’ve reached the beginning of July but shouldn't forget June, which ended with a swatch of updates and releases.

Security is always a priority like these: avast! Free Antivirus 7.0.1451 is the free version of the AV tool, with avast! Pro Antivirus 7.0.1451 also featuring the same new Emergency Updater and improvements to sandboxing. Also available is avast! Internet Security 7.0.1451 which includes not only virus protection, but also a firewall, web filtering and more. Another free firewall is available in the form of the newly updated ZoneAlarm Free 10.2.64.0 and if you want virus protection as well, you might want to take a look at ZoneAalarm Free Antivirus + Firewall 10.2.

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Danish software developer Secunia ApS has released a brand new version of its free security audit tool for Windows users. Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) 3.0 allows users to automatically scan their computer for missing Windows updates and outdated software, and, in many cases, the program can then automate the update process where necessary.

Version 3.0 boasts a cleaner, simpler user interface, automated patching support, localization support and improvements to underlying features.

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What does security software even mean now? It’s such a vast concept that it can cover everything from file scanning to parental controls and everything in between. It pretty much covers everything except someone telling us, "Don’t do that, you’re going to regret it!"

It is the most quickly evolving type of software that we run on our computers, but it hardly gets noticed.

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Got a MacBook Pro with a dual GPU? gfxCardStatus is a free tool that enables you to not only see whether your system is currently using the integrated or discrete GPU, but also gives you the chance to manually switch whenever you want -- all without the need to log out of your account or restart OS X. The latest version of the app adds support for the Retina displays sported by the newest additions to the MacBook Pro range.

A simple menu bar makes it easy to choose which of your GPUs should be used, or to remain in dynamic mode so all of this is taken care of for you. There are various reasons why you might want to override the automatic settings. If you find that a particular app caused your discrete GPU to be used, you can get some extra life from your battery by opting to use the integrated GPU instead.

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The Recycle Bin is fine for catching files you accidentally erase on your desktop, or while playing around in Explorer. But the command line, unfortunately, is a different story. Enter a “del *.*” in the wrong place and the files really are gone.

A good undelete tool will probably be able to recover them, of course (especially if you’re quick). But Recycle could help you avoid the problem in the first place, by providing a simple command line tool which that files by sending them to the Recycle Bin.

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Your hard drive is buzzing, and you don’t know why. Finding out what’s going on is probably a good idea: at best a legitimate program is tying up resources and slowing you down, at worst you’ve got a malware infection. But what do you do now?

Launching FolderChangesView, the latest release from NirSoft, could be a good first move.

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Open-source desktop customization tool Rainmeter 2.3 has been released, boasting a number of major changes. Rainmeter allows Windows users to customise their desktop well beyond the options provided by the OS using a range of “skins”, which can be downloaded from other sites or created from scratch by the user.

Version 2.3’s headline new feature is a new, improved Rainmeter Skin Package system, which will simplify the process of distributing new user-created skins to others.

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As we reach the end of June, commercial developers are busy preparing software for a Q3 launch, so we’ll be entering a lean period for key, new releases. This doesn’t mean it was a quiet week; far from it. TechSmith released Camtasia 8.0 for Windows and 2.2 for Mac. This powerful screen-recording tool will enable you to produce professional-level presentations for just about any audience.

If you’re seeking an image editor to complement your screen recording toolkit, look no further than the free GIMPshop 2.8. This is effectively the popular GIMP, wrapped up in a different and user-friendly interface. The various K-Lite Codec Packs are a collection of codecs you can use to play video and audio content on your PC. Although it’s becoming more of a challenge to find videos that won’t play on your PC, there are still plenty encoded using a compression format that was more popular in the early part of the previous decade. Download K-Lite Codec Pack 8.92 Basic, the Standard pack, Full or Mega, which also contains a number of conversion tools.

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Most PC users need to capture an image of their screen from time to time, and Windows’ ability to grab the full screen and active window will usually be enough. Opting for a specialist screen grabber can give you considerably more options, though, and the open source Live Capture is a particularly good example.

The program allows you to draw a rectangular (or freehand) area you’d like to capture, for instance. It can grab the contents of a fixed area of the screen. There’s an option to grab a program menu, and the Window Control Capture tool makes it easy to grab specific elements of a window: a toolbar, say, or the folder tree in Explorer.

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Uninstalling a program within Windows can take a little work. You might have to head off to Control Panel, find the “Uninstall a program” applet, wait for it to display (which can take a few seconds in itself on some systems, as Windows calculates “disk space used” figures and more), then find and double-click your unwanted application.

Menu Uninstaller Lite could make your life a little simpler, though. Once installed removing any program is as easy as right-clicking its shortcut, selecting the new Uninstall option and confirming your decision. Menu Uninstaller will then find and launch its regular uninstall application, which will remove it as usual.

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One of the plus points of Windows 8 is that it can natively mount an ISO image as a virtual disk, allowing you to browse it without requiring a physical disc. If you’d like to have that ability right now, though, there’s no need to wait -- the free ImDisk provides capable ISO handling and a whole lot more.

If you’d like to take a closer look at an ISO file, for instance, then right-click it, select “Mount as ImDisk Virtual Drive” > OK, and in a few seconds the image will be available within Explorer as a new virtual drive. (The program supports NRG images, too.)

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The Metro user interface is without doubt the most controversial feature of Microsoft's upcoming operating system Windows 8. When you dive deeper into the criticism that Metro faces, you notice that one argument stands out among the majority of critics: Metro is for tablets and touch-devices and not the desktop.

While it is possible to use Metro with a mouse and keyboard, its big buttons and controls, like the Charms menu and swiping motions, do cater to an audience that uses touch-devices. When you look closer, you will also notice that Metro does not really offer anything that desktop users can't do on the PC or on the Internet as well, oftentimes even better.

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Most free recovery tools focus on undeleting files only. As its name suggests, though, Eassos PartitionGuru Free goes a little further: the program can recover anything from individual files to entire partitions, and it has a few other useful features thrown in, too.

That’s the theory, at least. In practice the free edition of the program is a little restricted, and can’t recover data on USB keys, GPT disks, or regular drives which don’t use 512-byte sectors. If that’s not going to affect you, though, PartitionGuru does otherwise have some interesting functionality which you might find very useful.

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