Useful Free Utilities

[Jeff Zylstra]

I found this 2 useful utilities, and thought others might them useful as well.

The first is NetworkStuff.Exe.  Which can be downloaded here:

http://jacquelin.potier.free.fr/networkstuff/

It automatically kicks you over to Paypal and asks for a $5 donation when it is finished downloading.  It's worth it in my opinion, but the nice thing is you aren't forced to contribute or held up by 20 additional menu bar downloads, or registry fix ads.  It does a lot of network utilities from ARP, to DNS stuff, to packet capture, to WOL, shutdown, etc...  It runs off from a USB stick, which I really like.   

The second one is Network Administrator by IntelliAdmin.  You can download the free copy here: 

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/downloads/

It has a lot of things that allow you to remotely enable or disable things on new computers, like USB sticks, CD/DVD writers, etc..., as well as control a lot of other things.  You have to give up your Email address to receive the link to download it, but they don't hassle you too much. 

One of the things that they include is the Windows Cron Service.  It's the *nix-like version of task scheduler that runs as a service in Windows.  Unlike the Windows Task Manager, it does not care if a user is logged on or not, and it will run scheduled tasks regardless.  It's handy for running utilities on your file server, especially if no user is logged in at the time.  I run my pre-backup utilities on it and it's very reliable, unlike Task Scheduler.

P.S.  Please add your choice for good free utilities here, and/or add uses for ones that are already popular.  Whatever makes life easier or solves a problem is a welcome addition!

[Hans Manhave]

I like to suggest Rainmeter.  The website is:  http://rainmeter.net   Please note that it is not .com or .org etc.   For those who like to mess with gadgets, widgets and skins.

[Charlie Charbonneau]

Found this nifty little DNS Benchmark program.  Does what it says. Nice and free.

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

Analyzes, and gives recommendations afterwards. 

[Hans Manhave]

Nice.  I have used his SpinRite utility to fix many "broken" hard drives.  Software I even paid for when it was available free.

Found this nifty little DNS Benchmark program.  Does what it says. Nice and free.

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

Analyzes, and gives recommendations afterwards.