Usman Javaid

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SMARegisTry: Backup And Restore Windows Registry Hives & Keys With A Click

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Unlike Mac OS X and Linux-based operating systems, Windows includes quite a smart, yet vulnerable, database of configuration settings for user profiles, system utilities, user apps and device drivers called Registry. Windows Registry acts a central database repository for almost all applications and system utilities that are allowed to access and make changes to system-wide locations. Since malicious scripts, viruses and malwares attempt to modify Windows Registry for exploiting administrator rights to perform low-level operations, it’s highly advisable to backup critical Windows Registry hives, so that when a virus/malware modifies Windows Registry, you can restore them to prevent any irreparable Windows faults. SMARegisTry Backup is a miniscule, portable application that allows you to not only backup entire registry hives and sub keys, but also restore the backed up registry hives with a click. Read More

Skype Auto Recorder: Automatically Record Voice Calls From Defined Contacts

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In our guide to supercharge your Skype experience, we recommended CallGraph Skype Recorder to capture voice calls and save them at defined output location. The application comes handy in situations where you need to control voice call recording from an on-screen recorder, as it allows you to start, pause and stop the recording with a click. It records all the voice calls that you accept, and doesn’t allow specifying Skype contacts whose calls are to be recorded automatically. Today, we came across an open source extension for Skype, namely Skype Auto Recorder, that lets you apply voice call recording filters, so you can record voice calls of only specific contacts. Moreover, the application starts recording voice calls as soon as you accept them, and saves the recording in MP3 format. Read More

Network Sorcerer Is One-Stop Client PC Control Utility For Small Networks

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Network administrators of small scale networks, ranging from 10-50 systems connected to one server, often require a standalone network suite that can automatically administer all the connected systems. There are many network tools available to control the client operations such as system shutdown, restart, hibernate, wake-on-LAN, send critical messages and more, but what if you don’t want to switch between network utilities to perform required network tasks. If you’re using a variety of tools to control each aspect of the deployed network, check out Network Sorcerer. It’s a comprehensive application that has been specifically designed to handle small networks. Providing a unified administration console, it lets you perform client PC-related tasks right from system tray, including ping hosts, shutdown, suspend, restart, and hibernate, and send direct messages. Moreover, these options are highly configurable; you can select the options you want to access from system tray. Details to follow after the jump. Read More

DirectorySlicer: Split Directory Into Small Folders & Create Hardlinks

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Organizing folders that contain thousands of files surely takes a lot of effort and time, as one has to manually move files to separate folders, and then perform required file management operations. If you often deal with such situations where files in a specific folder need to be moved to multiple locations, DirectorySlicer may prove to be of great help. It’s a miniscule, portable application that allows you to divide directory’s content according to defined size. Supporting optical discs’ size presets including CD (650 and 700 MB), CD-90 (800 MB), DVD (4.7 and 8.5 GB), Blu-ray Disc (25 and 50 GB), it shows a complete structure of source and output folder with size of each sub-folder. Read More

en2ki: Convert Evernote Notebooks Into Kindle MOBI Format

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Ever wanted to read Evernote notebooks on your Kindle without going through the hassle of creating a MOBI file out of them? Enter en2ki, a simple, portable utility that can seamlessly convert Evernote notes into Kindle’s supported format. Additionally, you don’t have to manually download your Evernote’s notes to local disk in order to convert them into MOBI format. Using Dynamic-link libraries such as Evernote. dll and Thrift.dll from Evernote API and kindlegen.exe from Amazon, it automatically downloads your Evernote’s notebooks and converts them in Kindle’s MOBI format. Read More

How To Backup Files To BitLocker-Enabled Virtual Hard Disk [Beginner's Guide]

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Microsoft’s VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) format is widely used to contain and run guest operating systems using Microsoft virtualization software, MS Virtual PC. Unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows 7 natively supports creating and mounting virtual hard disk using Disk Management utility. Not only does it create MBR partitions, it also allow creating GUID partition on VHD to store large amount of data. With Windows 7, you no longer need an additional tool to attach VHD files for accessing virtual hard disk data and backing up files and folders to virtual hard disk file. When you attach a virtual hard disk file, you can access and modify its content just like the way you use physical hard drive’s volumes. Since Windows 7 provides all disk-related features with attached virtual hard drive, you can use it as a secured backup storage. In this post, we will guide you through the process of creating a virtual hard disk and encrypting it with BitLocker to securely backup files and folders. Read More

Dashlane Is Your Personal Internet Assistant, An Alternative To LastPass

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When it comes to selecting a personal information and account password manager, there are numerous applications available at your disposal. For most users, who want a powerful, as well as simple, online password manager, LastPass is the obvious choice, while others keep their personal info and account credentials secured from external attacks using KeePass and 1Password. Today, we came across a personal internet assistant and online accounts manager called Dashlane, which allows users to securely manage personal information and online passwords. Packed with form filler and automatic login features, Dashlane provides one-stop solution for accessing and managing personal information and online accounts credentials. The application includes a comprehensive set of features and tools to help you easily organize online account user logins and passwords, enabling you to automatically fill the user login details, including username and password, and add new user logins without having to bring up the dashboard. Details to follow after the jump. Read More

Fiddler: Monitor HTTP Traffic For Any Application & Filter Data Tracking

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Ever wanted to know which servers the HTTP requests traverse while reaching a specific web server? Fiddler is a comprehensive web debugger for Windows, which tracks and logs all HTTP connections, and data exchanged between your network interface and internet. The application gives insight into files, connections, cookies and other objects that were exchanged during each session. Apart from inspecting the HTTP traffic, it also sets breakpoints and manipulates both incoming and outgoing data to let you view the data that is being downloaded and uploaded. Moreover, the application is capable of tracking traffic from all applications that support proxy connections, processes, and especially web browsers to view send and receive requests.  Additionally, it can be used to debug internet traffic from mobile devices including Android, Windows Phone & iPhone. Read More

Clipboard Magic: Remove Duplicates & Paste Text Items In Series via Hotkey

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Clipboard Managers certainly come handy in situations where one has to copy text from different sources and paste the copied text snippets into required applications. There are diverse range of clipboard archivers available out there, which let users perform clipboard-specific operations along with creating a stack of copied items, but If you’re planning to copy text or code structures from various sources and paste them in a series, Clipboard Magic is worth a try. It’s a lightweight, clipboard manager and archiving utility for Windows that lets you organize copied plain text items under a single window, allowing you to use them via a series of hotkey combinations. Read More

How To Take Ownership And Grant Permissions To Access Files & Folders In Windows 8

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Like its predecessors, Windows 8 imposes strict access permissions on system-wide locations, folders and files. These access permissions restrict unauthorized users (including clients on network, and standard and guest users on local PC), and external sources (malicious scripts, viruses, malwares etc), from accessing core system folders and files. You may know that, when a malicious script attacks a system, it attempts to gain admin or root access to the system to exploit security vulnerabilities. In contrast to previous Windows versions, Windows 8 comes with an enhanced, and robust Advanced Security Settings, making it difficult for a novice users to gain complete control over the system locations, folders and files. Read More

Desktop Slider: Create Multiple Workspaces & Slide Windows Across The Screen

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Although Windows 7 has Aero Snap feature to quickly adjust two opened application windows on the screen, it doesn’t automatically move them when you drag an application window. This compels users to use third-party application windows adjustment utilities such as Asus Multiframe Utility, Windy,  WinSplit Revolution etc., to quickly arrange opened windows on screen. Desktop Slider is built to slide opened windows across the screen, allowing you to not only focus on currently active window but also snap them to screen borders. What makes it unique from other application window managers is its ability to create infinite workspaces; you select the window and drag it across the screen to start working on other applications. You can view all open windows or select only active one using a hotkey combination. Moreover, it also let you hide the application windows; using the slider feature, you can keep selected application windows at required side of the screen and focus on only important ones. Read More

How To Convert Physical Computer Into Virtual Machine (VMware, VirtualBox & Virtual PC)

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Virtual Machine software like VirtualBox, Virtual PC, Parallels, VMware etc, provide the utility of not only running multiple virtual environments on the host system, but also allow creating and configuring the machines as per the requirements. The Virtual Machine software are designed keeping high-end usage requirements in mind, and therefore, such applications are authorized to gain complete control over all the installed hardware and software components. While machine virtualization utilities are widely used to run disk images of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux distributions, they don’t allow converting the physical into a virtual machine in order to use the entire system on other platforms in a virtual environment. Today, we look at the the simplest way to convert the local machine to virtual machine, and then configure and run it on other systems using virtualization software. Read More

Flowkeeper: Assign Multiple Pomodoros To Tasks & View Work Productivity Report

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Developed by Francesco Cirillo, Pomodoro is the widely used time management technique that helps users divide the total work into 25 minute intervals called pomodoros (Italian word for potatoes) to efficiently manage both amount of work to be done and total time. Not only does it help users manage time, it also makes it easy to breakdown the total amount of work into smaller tasks, so that they can be performed within 25 minute time interval. After working on tasks for 25 minutes, it alerts users to take a break for improving mental agility. Flowkeeper is a light-weight, unobtrusive Pomodoro application that allows you to keep track of pomodoros as well as tasks. The application operates from system tray, letting you quickly view pomodoros history and currently assigned tasks to complete the work within set time frame. Read More

DetoClip: Extract Source Code & Plain Text From Web Content In Clipboard

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DetoClip is a multi-purpose clipboard manager for Windows that supports a wide range of file types, including TXT, RTF, HTML, BMP etc., allowing you to hold as many clipboard items in its stack as you want. The application is geared towards web developers who deal with dozens of code files, and copy code structures from one file to another. It provides switchable preview between plain text, formatted text and source code for text you copy from web pages, letting you quickly copy the HTML code of selected text to application development IDE. Unlike other clipboard managers, it allows you to edit the clipboard items, making it easy to create customized clipboard items which can then be pasted into required applications. Read More

HDDScan: All-in-One Hard Drive Tool To Perform Surface Scan & SMART Tests

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Do you often face hard drive crashes and read/write issues while dealing with enormous volumes of data? Perhaps, it’s the time to put your hard disk through a series of tests to measure its overall performance. It happens quite so often that hard disk suddenly halts without showing any type of errors. Using conventional hard drive diagnostic tools in such cases don’t help identify the read/write faults and other like issues. What you probably need is a low-level hard disk diagnostic utility that can perform surface scan of all hard disk volumes to find the potential issues. HDDScan is a powerful, low-level hard disk scan and diagnostic program, which is developed to perform numerous hard disk performance-specific tasks. It supports all types of conventional hard drives including IDE, SATA, SCSI, RAID arrays and external storage mediums including, SD cards, USB, and external hard disks. Read More

What Are Physical & Logical Bad Sectors Of Hard Drive And How To Repair Them [Guide]

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Amongst all the potential hard disk faults and errors, bad cluster is one that doesn’t make it completely non-functional. Hard disk bad cluster, casually known as bad sector, is a small sector which doesn’t respond to read and write requests, and therefore, the device software, which is operating the hard drive, reports it as unusable sector. Bad sectors are usually categorized into two broad types; Physical bad sectors and Logical bad sectors. The former type of clusters on disk need to be mapped out to continue read and write operation on disks, whereas the logical bad sectors are usually reported by the operating system due to its inability to access the cluster on hard disk. In this post, we will briefly discuss each type of bad clusters, and look at some tools that may help you repair bad sectors on hard disk. Read More

How To Restrict User Access & Enforce Windows 7 Personalization Settings

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Earlier, we showed you how to prevent PC users from accessing Internet Connection Properties dialog, so that they can not change the DHCP settings and DNS server address. Using the built-in Microsoft Management Console snap-in called Local Group Policy Editor, you could define a wide range of system components’ usage constraints to limit users' access to core system settings as well as visual configurations. Like previous Windows versions, Windows 7 lets you prevent PC users from tweaking the default or specified Desktop Personalization settings, including theme settings, screen saver, sounds, desktop background, and other visual styles. This post shows you a simple way of applying user access limits on Personalization and Visual Styles in order to prevent PC users from changing their settings. Read More

eToolz Brings The Most Useful Network & Web Tools Under One Hood

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Do you hate using multiple network tools for performing required tasks, including domain lookup, resolve DNS, ping domain, trace route and more? eToolz is a light-weight, portable application suite that includes a total of 10 most useful network utilities, enabling you to perform numerous network-specific operations from one window. The application has been specifically built to help network administrators diagnose and resolve a wide range of network-related issues. While the application comes packed with superior-alternatives to various Windows command line utilities, including Tracert, Ping etc, it hosts a number of web-related tools as well, that allow you to view page rank of any website, view domain whois information, verify email address, extract and view HTTP header info from given URL, and connect to internet time servers. Read More

How To Prevent Windows 7 Local Account Users From Changing Internet Settings

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You may know that Windows 7 comes with an enhanced UAC (User Account Control) feature that regulates the access to user account profile folders, allowing local account holders to seperately save their application settings, files and library folders, including Music, Documents, Videos, Pictures, etc. It doesn’t provide a convenient option to prevent local account holders from enforcing Windows 7 system-wide settings. For example, local user accounts, including standard account, can change the default screen resolution, modify DHCP settings (including primary & alternate DNS server address), default gateway and PC local IP. Many times, it happens that local account users change the DHCP settings while diagnosing internet connectivity issues, and modify the correct gateway, IP address and DNS server address. If you hold an administrator account on your home PC, you can prevent others from changing these settings. This post shows a simple way to prevent others from accessing internet/network configuration settings. Read More

Deploy Event-Based Network Monitoring Solution With IT Service View

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Amongst the list of network administration tasks, monitoring each connected device, including hubs, routers, switches, clients, member and main servers is probably the most complicated task, as it requires system administrators to manually check each devices in a deployed network architecture. There are certainly a wide range of network-related tools available for server editions of Windows that allow monitoring a set of network devices like hubs, switches and routers, but If you don’t want to install multiple network monitoring applications to keep an eye on all connected devices, have a look at IT Service View. It’s a simple, yet robust, Network Devices monitoring utility that supports client and server editions of Windows, allowing system administrators to monitor both small scale and large-scale network architecture without having to deploy a complex monitoring solution. Details to follow after the jump. Read More