As a very hands-on IT helpdesk manager by day and private IT consultant by night I use a whole lot of different utilities to operate, maintain, and repair computers. Many of the utilities I use are full commercial programs bought by my employer, others are free programs that I’ve stumbled across in the many years I’ve been working with PCs. I’ve discovered that many of the free utilities are generally every bit as good and in many cases far superior to the paid for programs. Below you’ll find a categorised list of all the programs I use with brief descriptions, links and ratings.
Audit Utilities - Tools for finding out what what software is installed on your PC and what hardware is under the hood.
CCleaner – Everyone’s heard of this one – great tool for removing unwanted files and programs from your PC
DBAN – Darricks boot and Nuke – Wipe data securely from any hard drive.
McAfee Removal Tool – get rid of the bloated security software with this free tool
MSConfig cleanup – If you’ve stopped programs running by using MSConfig you can use this tool to remove old entries from the MSConfig interface.
Norton Removal Tool – Get rid of Norton’s bloated security suite with this great little tool.
Revo Uninstaller – An better alternative to the Windows Add/Remove programs application. This software will uninstall all the left overs that Add/Remove programs normally leaves behind.
PC Decrappifier – Great name for a great utility. Run this on a new computer to remove all the chaff that manufacturers load them up with.
Unlocker – No tech should be without this utility to remove those pesky files that stubbornly refuse to be deleted.
WinRar – If you’re still using WinZip....where have you been?!
Unstoppable Copier – If you’re fed up with Windows Explorer giving up part way through a large file copy job then this utility is for you. Will carry on copying regardless of corrupted or inaccessible files.
