Freeware Rebooted

[eL_PuSHeR]

Thanks.

[DennisD]

Atrise ToHTML 2.3.0:

 

A file format converter that can convert RTF, DOC, PDF, etc. to the HTML.

 

Atrise ToHTML has very easy and efficient user interface and fast multithreading engine. Simply drag and drop your files or directories from Windows Explorer to the program window to begin.

 

I use this to convert ebooks of various formats to HTML to be edited in "Sigil Editor".

 

http://www.softpedia...se-ToHTML.shtml

 

 

Sigil Editor:

 

You can cut, copy and paste text, make it bold, italic or underlined, as well as change the reading from right to left.

 

You can also use a find and replace tool, go to a particular line, edit metadata (title, author, language) and insert images.

 

In addition, you can split or insert chapters, zoom in and out, hide toolbars, change the heading and text alignment, enable a numbered or bullet list, increase or decrease indent, as well as remove formatting, and more.

 

Great for editing badly formatted ebooks.

 

http://www.softpedia...ors/Sigil.shtml

 

 

Calibre Version: 1.5.0:

 

Just the best eBook converter out there. Also a library. Couldn't do without it.

 

http://calibre-ebook...ownload_windows

 

 

CueMaster:

 

CueMaster is a freeware cue sheet creator. Creating a cue sheet for a CD has never been so easy. CueMaster can retrieve CD track info from the free online album database FreeDB, or recover cuepoints from the MP3 file itself.

 

I use this occasionally when I have to rip a CD as a single track for my non gapless playback Sony Walkman. The Cue sheet lists all tracks of a single track album separately when loaded into something like Foobar (my audio player of choice), and enables the single track to be split back to separate tracks if required.

 

http://cuemaster.org/

 

 

MKVToolnix:

 

MKVToolnix is a software that allows you to demux (separate) and mux (merge back together) and create video files with the MKV format, as well as view technical information on them.

 

You can select and arrange tracks, chapters and tags. But you can also configure general track, format specific and extra options.

 

You can edit the track name, tags and timecodes, as well as select the language, default and forced track flag, and set the output filename.

 

Furthermore, you can change the aspect ratio, display width and height, charset, cropping, cues, compression, user-defined options, and more.

 

http://www.softpedia...KVToolnix.shtml

 

 

TOff:

 

This utility is useful for people who would like to leave their computers unattended for some time before automatically turning them off (logging off users, rebooting, hibernating or putting them into sleep mode).

 

TOff can perform these tasks at a certain day and time (one time or every day), as well as after a certain period of mouse & keyboard, CPU or network inactivity.

 

I use this a lot to shutdown after a completed download.

 

http://www.dennisbabkin.com/toff/

 

 

ERUNTgui 1.5.0:

 

ERUNTgui is a graphic user interface for the popular registry backup and restore program "ERUNT" created by Lars Hederer.The reason for creating "ERUNTgui" is to place all the modules that make up the original "ERUNT" utility in to one user interface, making the program easier to use.

 

http://www.softpedia...oad-131499.html

 

 

Karen's Replicator:

 

Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives! Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network.

 

Options include repeated copies at intervals as short as a few minutes, or as long as several months, copy only files that have changed, and the replication of folder and file deletions.

 

An oldie but a goodie.

 

http://www.karenware...treplicator.asp

 

May not be updated in future due to the sad passing in 2012 of it's author Karen Kenworthy

 

 

AlbumArt:

 

Good search engine for album art.

 

http://www.albumart.org/gb/

 

 

Avanti GUI:

 

Avanti GUI is a free front-end for FFmpeg with the option to insert AviSynth as pre-processor.

It offers user friendly control over all basic and advanced FFmpeg options. A number of template examples are included. No need to be familiar with AviSynth to use the predefined Avanti/AviSynth pre-processor options. Avanti comes as a portable application packed in a zip folder and doesn't require installation. No adware or internet access.

 

Used this for years to convert movies from NTSC framerate (23.976) to PAL (25), but it does a heck of a lot more.

 

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/

 

 

Free Online Pregnancy Test:

 

How it works

 

The online pregnancy test uses a technological advance known as "Zeta Waves", a type of non-invasive radiation emitted from all computer monitors.

 

http://www.thepregnancytester.com/

[Derek891]

"The online pregnancy test uses a technological advance known as "Zeta Waves", a type of non-invasive radiation emitted from all computer monitors."

 

I think you're spoofing us Dennis. I held my head right in front of the monitor and couldn't feel a thing.

 

Otherwise, thank you very much.

[Alan_B]

I think you're spoofing us Dennis. I held my head right in front of the monitor and couldn't feel a thing.

Only people that use Windows 8 or Apple iPhones get to believe it and feel it

[Winapp2.ini]

The online pregnancy test uses a technological advance known as "Zeta Waves", a type of non-invasive radiation emitted from all computer monitors.

 

Directions unclear; face stuck in DVD tray

[Derek891]

Believe me Alan, I didn't feel a thing, and I do use Windows 8, as you already know. As far as me getting my head examined BEFORE buying a machine with Windows 8, that is another question entirely!

[Andavari]

Directions unclear; face stuck in DVD tray

 

Did it burn or rip.

[Winapp2.ini]

Did it burn or rip.

 

It read

[DennisD]

PeToUSB:

 

With this little tool, you can install "BartPE"or "ERD Commander" to a USB flash drive. I've used this successfully many times.

 

http://www.softpedia...k/PeToUSB.shtml

 

If any of the regular members (and I don't mean first thing every morning), wants to try this, I have a BartPE (70mb) and an ERD Commander (63mb) ISO stored online. In the cloud as they say.

 

Of course I'll pass these over for PeToUSB testing purposes only.

 

PM me if you're interested.

 

 

BootSafe:

 

For less experienced users especially, but also useful for the more experienced user, this little utility enables one to boot into various types of "Safe Mode" from within Windows without having to reboot manually and frantically press the F8 key.

 

 

http://www.softpedia.../BootSafe.shtml

 

The version in the download is the one shown in the screenshot (2.0.1000) and not the advertised version (1.0.1002).

 

This little utility actually ships with SuperAntiSpyware, but is now obviously available as a separate tool. I've used this myself many times and it's solid and reliable.

 

http://www.superanti...lay.html?faq=75

[Derek891]

Thanks Dennis. Here's one I installed just over a week ago, and I wish I had done it much sooner:

 

VMware Player (v6.0.0)

Download: https://my.vmware.co...oduct_downloads

Description: A real timesaver for running an OS from the ISO image. Great for evaluating and testing an OS without having to install to hard drive or to USB and run live. Options to configure system memory, number of processors used, allocate hard drive space, and configure hardware.

Comments: The default memory settings are set too low, the default for processors is set at one. Change these before trying to boot, or you will be very disappointed when it hangs or crashes. (Note: This very much depends on your machine; I have a four core processor and 8GB of system memory available.) On the plus side, it booted and ran two systems I could not get to boot from USB.

[DennisD]

You're welcome Derek and although the only virtual software I've ever gotten into is "Returnil" and "PowerShadow", VMPlayer looks interesting.

 

I actively still use the 2008 version of Returnil as it's a free version and still does what it's supposed to do solidly and reliably.

[Alan_B]

More than two years ago VMware had a massive security hole and gave absolutely no support response to two separate issues which I raised.

My primary issue was that when I drag-drop-copied something between two partitions on my SECONDARY HDD,

one of which was for access by the virtual machine,

something went wrong and the virtual machine crashed.

 

Then Windows Explorer had a great big red bar showing that I had zero free space available In system partition C:\. on my PRIMARY HDD

there was too much copied to the virtual machine

 

I discovered that because VMware was NOT available as a portable application, and could only be installed,

even though most of it was installed on the secondary HDD,

it still used system resources including %TEMP% in my system partition C:\

and the virtual machine had stuffed a gazillion Gigabytes into %TEMP% on my system partition C:\

 

So far as I am concerned if a virtual machine can disgorge its "sandboxed" contents into my operating system when I innocently drag-drop-copy,

it will do the same when "sandboxed" malware deliberately forces a buffer overflow.

 

I uninstalled VMware and replaced it with VBox from Sun/Oracle.

Initially I had problems with VBox, but each time a had a quick helpful response and it very quickly worked well for me,

 

Regardless of whether or not VMware has by now fixed their issue,

there was no response to the two topics which I posted on their forum, and I gave up looking after two years.

 

Both VBox and VMware have their own user forums - which I have not visited for a few years.

I suggest it might be worth visiting those forums to get an idea of the percentage of problems that are never resolved,

and the average time taken before a problem is resolved.

[hazelnut]

Have used both VBox and VMplayer. Currently have VMPlayer installed on Win 8.

[mta]

just to clear it up, when you say VBox, are you referring to VirtualBox by Oracle?

[hazelnut]

Yes

[Derek891]

Thanks for replying to this post Alan. You've "been there, done that" when it comes to a lot of different software, and I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience. I did visit their forum several times so far, and most of the people posting were concerned with boot issues, crashes, or getting specific hardware to work. However, I didn't have the time to go back two years or more.

 

Which version of VMware Player were you using at the time? And were you using it to run Windows within Windows? I'd like to know because I think the reason I haven't had any issues so far is the fact that I've been using it for an entirely different purpose. I've been running 32 bit Linux systems in order to evaluate their processor and memory load running various desktops and using different Linux applications. Any files stored on my hard drive by VMware are Linux based, so in the event of the virtual machine crashing, would it pose the same risk as Windows based files would? Or does the risk lie within VMware itself? I think I'm safe in this regard, but I would appreciate your opinion nonetheless.

[Alan_B]

I was using version 3.14

 

I was running Virtual Windows 7 64 bit on a Real Windows 7 64 bit platform.

 

This was my first post on 1st Sept 2011, and I bumped it on 17th and still got no response.

https://communities....m/thread/326929

 

This was a separate topic which got no response so I gave up and moved onto VirtulaBox

https://communities....m/thread/328856

 

I have just looked at the very recent topics, and again it appears that no one gets any solutions.

This has 14 posts, the first 12 all report that version 6 fails to initialise after an upgrade to version 6.

and the last tow posts are users that fixed their problems by un-installing 6 and installing 5.2

and the last one even tried a total purge of every trace of VMware followed by a fresh install of 6.0,

AND AGAIN even that failed to initialise.

https://communities....m/thread/457667

Your Mileage May Vary

 

It is especially annoying that the destruction of free space on my host was NOT due to the Virtual system crashing,

but apparently even the latest version is designed to always transfer files via the Host computer %TEMP%,

THEREFORE it is designed to transfer malware into the Host system even if the virtual system has not crashed.

https://communities....m/thread/457688

 

If your virtual machine has no Internet Access,

and if you have used dependable malware scanners designed to detect Windows malware,

I think your Windows system should remain safe if those files broke through the barrier out of VMware and back into Windows.

 

Please note that :-

I vaguely remember reading that it is possible to receive an unsolicited malware file that can infect both Windows and also Linux;

I cannot remember where I read that - or if in fact it was just a bad dream

[Derek891]

Thanks for the links Alan. I had no problem getting VMware to initialize after installing, so I "turned a blind eye" as far as that particular thread was concerned. Maybe I just got lucky for once. And I don't have the need to drag and drop files between systems, so I avoided that pitfall.

 

My only problem was being a little too conservative with memory settings at first. I was attempting to see what the bare minimum was for certain Linux OS's. Also, my reasoning was that it would be better to crash the virtual machine rather than the host. Windows 8 has been behaving itself since the last episode, so I didn't want to invoke the wrath of the Microsoft gnomes living beneath the keyboard.

 

And thanks for the tip about internet access where the VM is concerned. Better safe than sorry.

[login123]

One of the posts in the old Freeware topic has a link to Powershadow that should be replaced.

The link goes to Tucows, and the exe now tries to install a bunch of junk.

It didn't do that when I linked it...is probably some sort of wrapper...not sure, didn't let it finish on this machine.

That topic is locked, so I can't edit the post to replace the link.

 

The description in that old post is still accurate, just don't use the download link. The old post is:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=17921&st=380#entry144208

 

A newer link to the installer I have always used is available at CNET.

(To avoid the CNET installer, use the "Direct Download Link" not the big green button.)

http://download.cnet.com/Power-Shadow/3000-2094_4-10359673.html

 

The free version is v. 2.6. It says it's a trial version, but you can convert it to a registered version with the registration number found in this thread at post #12:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=925327#post925327

 

I checked the hashes, the SHA256 hash for the correct file is 8a4b7e46baa49843034a956707e939a27324f84f1affb8d96a4652d2c1ca6110

[Andavari]

A newer link to the installer I have always used is available at CNET.

 

I edited that download link.

 

Like you found out Tucows is best avoided.

[login123]

Thanks, Andavari.

Must confess I don't remember the last time I used Tucows.

That is an old app for an old OS, but still useful, I hope.

[login123]

Everything Search Engine. 

 

http://www.voidtools.com/

 

From the FAQ: 
What is "Everything"?
. . . an administrative tool that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows.
. . ."Everything" initially displays every file and folder on your computer (hence the name "Everything").
. . .type in a search filter to limit what files and folders are displayed.

 

It is a file search app, fast as lightning.

 

Found it while looking for an alternative to the win 7 native search. 

I was pretty sure it was listed in this new freeware topic, but can't find it. 

May be mentioned somewhere else, sorry if I stole someones thunder. 

 

Doesn't require installation, it has a portable version that comes as a zip file. 

The portable unzips to an exe. 

Put it in its own folder, and when runs it the first time it creates a .db file and a .ini file within that folder. 

Afaik, no other changes are made to your computer.

 

 

[nodles]

Everything is great, I've been using it for a while now.

[Winapp2.ini]

also supporting Everything. Installed it a few years back and have become pretty dependent on it when looking for things

[Willy2]

EVERYTHING overlooks files in the Windows system subfolders. I use it but I don't trust it too much.