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Advice on free PC software, multimedia and web design for individuals and churches

Below are personal recommendations on programs and techniques for your consideration. (The adverts on the left will offer alternative commercial products and services)

Utilities

Utilities are both really useful programs and a good way of fouling up your computer at a very deep level. I have in the past had to reformat a hard disk and reinstall windows because a big brand name program offered to speed up my computer. Some utilities will do what they are supposed to do and tweak your windows and clear up the register and remove some of the junk from your hard disk. Some will have only a marginal effect on your computer. Some are very hard to get rid of once you have installed them - a bit like windows messenger.

Utilities tend to turn up by the dozen on magazine disks. Because of my experiences and predujices I tend to avoid them. Some I might go hunting for if I have a particular problem but only two are on my hard drive at the moment:

Sis Sandra

If you need to know more about your computer, which motherboard it is, which processor, video card, or perhaps you need to test some of your components then Sis Sandra will do all that - if you can make sense of the information. It is also a program which only looks it doesn't touch. The free download only contains some of the modules but its enough for the home user most of the time.

Autorun

It is irritating that a whole lot of stuff loads on start up while you wait to use the computer. With this program you can see all the autorun programs. I don't use the delete function just in case I need that utility again but I do uncheck programs that I don't normally use. Be careful though especially if you understand what an entry means - remember what it says above about utilities! The author writes of this:

"This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP. You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically! "

Sysinternals also offer a number of other utilities almost all of which are over technical.

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