password recovery tool

Cain and Abel

Our Rating: (Excellent)

Cain and Abel is a password recovery tool that enables network administrators to test network security, or home users to recover a variety of stored network passwords. The program reports sniffing and recovery of most popular protocols, including FTP, SMTP, POP3, HTTP, mySQL, ICQ, Telnet and others. It can also recover passwords hidden behind asterisk (***), stored in VNC profiles, SQL Server Enterprise Manager, Remote Desktop connections and wireless connections. Other features include LSA Secrets Dumper, Protected Storage password revealer, network enumeration, VoIP filtering and more. Probably one of the most complete network password recovery/security tools you can find. Cain and Abel is intended for network administrators or advanced users.

NOTE: Expect your antivirus software to alert you of a password cracking or hacking tool when installing this software!

Freeware

Free backup and restore software

Free backup and restore software for your system, partition and hard disk!

EASEUS Todo Backup

backup and restore your system

Our Rating: (Very Good!)

EASEUS Todo Backup is a disk imaging tool that enables you to backup, restore or clone your entire hard drive or selected partitions. It enables you to create a complete system backup with all your current applications and settings, allowing you to restore your system to the same state in the event of a system crash or hardware failure. You can also use the software to migrate your system to a new hard disk, without the need to reinstall your operating system and applications. Other features include mounting of backup images as virtual partitions (allows you to explore the content), disk cloning, creation of bootable recovery disks and more.

Freeware

Are your system, photos, music and financial data protected? EASEUS Todo Backup, supporting Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, is potent FREE backup software providing system backup & restore, hard disk or partition backup & restore, disk clone to protect your system and disk. It can back up whole PC, including the operating system plus your data, applications, settings and everything!

If your system is crashed or Linux based bootable CD fails to restore the system, we recommend you to restore system with WinPE based bootable CD which is more powerful than Linux one: operate without installation, support Windows 7 and Hardware Raid, etc.

Meanwhile, EASEUS Todo Backup is useful if you want to replace the older smaller hard disk by a newer larger hard disk or migrate/upgrade to Windows 7 without reinstalling the operating system and applications once again.

manage disk partitions

EASEUS Partition Master

Our Rating: (Very Good)

EASEUS Partition Master (Home Edition) enables you to configure and manage partitions on your hard drive(s). You can delete or format, and also resize and move your partitions. If you do not have any free disk space you can reduce the size of an existing partition, and use the unallocated disk space to create new or enlarged partitions to better manage your data. In addition, you can view disk and partition properties, set an active partition, change drive letters and more. EASEUS Partition Master can be run from within 32-bit Windows.

Freeware

Product Details

protect files on your USB drive

USB Safeguard

Our Rating: (Very Good)

USB Safeguard enables you to encrypt and password protect sensitive data on your USB drive. You can selected one or more folders to be encrypted and choose to securely delete the original (unencrypted) files with the built-in file shredder. The program also includes a handy Safe Browsing feature that allows you to launch Internet Explorer without leaving any Internet traces on the host computer. Other features include an on-screen keyboard for secure password input and free space wiping. USB Safeguard uses 256-bit AES encryption to protect your date. The program is not installed on your PC, it runs directly from your USB pen drive.

Freeware

personal backup tool

Uranium Backup Free

Our Rating: (Good)

Uranium Backup Free is a personal backup tool that enables you to backup your data to local drives, network drives or external USB/Firewire drives. You can create multiple backup sets and choose to run them manually or schedule them for automatic execution. The free version is limited to simple backup sets, other versions can be purchased that offer features lacking in free version.

Pros: Can be scheduled for automatic backups

Cons: No CD/DVD backups; no FTP backups;

Freeware

monitors your system for changes

MJ Registry Watcher

Our Rating: (Good!)

MJ Registry Watcher monitors your system for changes to any of the common startup folders and startup related registry keys, as well as many hidden startup methods and any other file(s) you want to monitor for changes. It offers several security presets, ranging from light to highest security, depending on your personal preference and level of technical expertise. Whenever a monitored file or key is modified, the program will prompt you to confirm the changes, you can also choose to automatically reject any modifications. The program includes features to backup selected items, search the list by keyword and advanced users can also exclude certain files, values or keys from being monitored. New features include emailing of alerts and manual quarantining of files and directories.

Freeware

on-demand virus scanner

Dr.Web CureIt

Our Rating: (Good!)

Dr.Web CureIt is a standalone anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner that scans your PC for viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, hack tools, rootkits, and other malware. The program does not require an installation and can be run from a USB drive. This is an on-demand scanner only, it can detect and remove virus infections but does not provide any real-time protection. Dr.Web CureIt is based on the ICSA certified Dr. Web scanning engine and should provide reliable detection. Free of charge for non-commercial use only.

Pros: No installation needed; scans for a wide range of viruses

Cons: No real-time protection; updates require re-download of the entire program

Freeware

make your PC boot faster

Soluto

Our Rating: (Very Good!)

Soluto is a unique startup manager that can help you make your PC boot faster by disabling or delaying certain auto-start items. Unlike similar applications that merely list the programs that are set to start automatically whenever your computer starts, Soluto actually analyzes the boot process and shows you exactly which applications are starting on boot and how they influence your overall boot time. Based on community feedback and internal data, Soluto can classify programs into groups that suggest which applications can be safely disabled (No-Brainers), which require some advanced knowledge and which are required by the operating system and cannot be disabled. Whenever available, Soluto provides detailed information for each program as well as statistics that show what other users did with it. You can choose to disable (pause) a startup program or delay the start until after the boot process is complete. Other features include long-term boot time statistics and optional participation in the community Wiki.

Freeware

analyze system processes and changes

System Explorer

Our Rating: (Very Good)

System Explorer is an enhanced Taskmanager that provides detailed information about running processes, startup programs, IE add-ons (BHOs), drivers, services network connections, system resources and more. It also keeps track of a history of processes that were started, and allows you to create file and registry snapshots that can be compared to analyze system changes in detail. System Explorer integrates online lookups into the right click menu for any process, driver or service, allowing you to retrieve additional information (and virus checking) from online sources including Google.

Freeware

system security suite

Rising PC Doctor

Our Rating: (Very Good)

Rising PC Doctor is an all-in-one system security suite that includes malware and Trojan scanning, system repair options, malicous website protection (URL blocker), USB media immunization, IE code overflow protection and more. It includes several automatic monitoring features that can be enable or disabled according to your preferences. The program also includes a variety of standard system utilities such as a startup manager, service manager, process manager, a file shredder, a connection monitor that shows which programs are currently using your Internet connection, and more.

Freeware

Wi-Fi network scanner

inSSIDer

Our Rating: (Very Good)

inSSIDer is a Wi-Fi network scanner that shows all available wireless networks along with their SSID, speed, channel and . It displays an real-time graph that tracks the strength of received signal in dBm over time and makes it easy to pick the best access point. inSSIDer supports the native Vista drivers as well as NDIS. Other features include support for GPS device and data export to .KML and Netstumbler (.ns1) formats.

inSSIDer is not officially supported for Win7 but appeared to be working just fine on our Windows 7 machines.

Freeware

personal reminder software

Desktop-Reminder

Our Rating: (Good!)

Desktop-Reminder is an easy to use reminder program that allows you to keep track of your upcoming appointments, birthdays, anniversaries and other events. You can quickly add simple reminders without having to configure many details, although the program also provides options to create recurring events with some additional notification options. Each time you start your computer the program will show a list of all task which are urgent for the current day, and it can also pop up an additional reminder window for any time sensitive tasks.

Freeware

view Internet TV stations

Super Internet TV

Our Rating: (Good)

Super Internet TV allows you to access hundreds of free TV stations, radio stations and web cams that are broadcasted over the Internet. The program requires Windows Media Player and Real Player and uses their capabilities to play the media streams. The channels are organized alphabetically by country, and allows you to maintain a list of favorite stations.

Freeware

personal firewall and antivirus

Comodo Internet Security

Our Rating: (Very Good)

Comodo Internet Security (formerly Comodo Firewall) combines Comodo AntiVirus with a personal firewall that filters ingoing and outgoing traffic on your computer. It alerts you of any applications that attempts to connect to the Internet and allows you to permanently or temporarily allow or block the connection. Advanced users can customize the application and TCP/IP rules based on IP address, protocol and destination port, however this is not required unless you have a reason to customize the rules. In addition to application behavior and network connections, Comodo Firewall also monitors components (dll files etc.) that initiate network connections, as well as parent processes and modifications to executables (checksum verification). Other features include attack prevention (port scanning, flooding), adjustable security levels, trusted networks, activity log and more. The firewall and antivirus features can be installed individually, you do not have to install both.

This program automatically installs the Ask.com toolbar unless you opt-out. [?]

Freeware