Readers offer up useful tools.
Some time ago we asked for recommendations on tools you thought should be in the Gearhead tool kit. Here are a few reader recommendations that we’ve been able to test.
The first is Registry Healer 4.4.1 from KsL Software. As its name implies, Registry Healer is a tool for finding and fixing problems with the registry. We ran it on one of our laptops that has been in use for about 14 months, and it discovered a staggering 773 problems!
Some problems were minor, such as missing help files left over from uninstalled applications that weren’t completely tidied up after removal, while others were serious, such as missing Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL), invalid paths and trashed entries.
Registry Healer starts by backing up your registry. Other run-time options include the ability to specify the types of problems to search for (such as invalid paths, invalid fonts and run entries), an option to have the registry automatically backed up regularly (under Windows 2000, XP and 2003 only), and an option to have it run on whatever schedule you like.
Once a scan is complete you can select the entries to fix and, voilà! Registry Healer fixes the problems and optionally compacts the registry, which can result in surprising performance improvements in systems with badly mangled registries.
Registry Healer is shareware, and the unregistered version is limited to 18 fixes per scan. Registration is $19.95.
Our next tool is an image viewer and manipulator that many people recommended: Irfanview, created by Irfan Skiljan in Austria.
Irfanview is small (a single .EXE file with no DLLs – hooray!), fast, easy to use, robust and does a lot more than display image files. It has a long list of features that includes support for a huge number of file formats, including animated GIFs, and the ability to save into 18 formats. Some of the formats require plug-ins, and the Irfanview site provides downloads for most of them.
Just a few of the many other features are thumbnail preview; slide-show display with the ability to save a slideshow as an .EXE file or in screensaver format or burn it to CD; display of EXIF, IPTC and comment text in slide-show and full-screen display; and support for Adobe Photoshop Filters. This is an incredible piece of engineering and for noncommercial use Irfanview is free, while registration is $12.
We should also mention a free image-management and editing tool – Google’s Picasa, which is available for Windows 2000, XP and Linux. Picasa supports camera detection and downloading, image fixes (such as sharpening, contract and brightness changes), along with excellent organizing and exporting features.
While Irfanview is our choice for quick image viewing, Picasa is our preferred image-organizing tool. Moreover, Picasa is valuable to beginners and experts. If only it were available for OS X . . . anyone at Google listening?
Our final tool, Belarc Advisor from Belarc, is a utility for analyzing the installed software and hardware on your PC. It finds missing Microsoft hot fixes, checks your anti-virus status and runs the Center for Internet Security benchmarks. The results are displayed in your Web browser, and all profile information is kept private on your PC.
Belarc Advisor’s reports are thorough, covering operating system details, processor model, motherboard make and model, installed drives and memory details, software keys (useful if you have mislaid the original disks), system devices, multimedia devices, printers and just about everything you might want to know about how a PC is set up.
It is free for personal use only – Belarc prohibits commercial, educational, military or government use, and offers instead a range of small and midsize business and enterprise management tools that provide similar services.
Thanks to all who wrote in. If you have any other favorite tool picks please send your recommendations to gearhead@gibbs.com.
