Multi Commander as Windows Explorer Alternative

 

Multi Commander is a multi-tabbed file manager and is an alternative to the standard Windows Explorer. It uses the very popular and efficient dual-panel layout.

 

Multi Commander has everything you need in your daily work with files to increase your speed and efficiency.

 

It has all the standard features that any file manager has, like copy, move, rename, view. But Multi Commander's big strengths are the special features that allow you to accomplish advanced tasks with ease. Tasks such as Auto-unpacking; Auto-sorting; Browsing inside archives; Editing the Windows Registry and accessing FTP; Searching for and Viewing files and pictures. There is also powerful, built-in Scripting support that allows you automate many tasks and expand its functionality. It allows you to do everything from the keyboard using shortcuts so that you can work quickly and efficiently.

 

Multi Commander works on Windows XP / 2003 / Vista / Server 2008 (R2) / Windows 7 / 8.x / 10 / Server 2012 (R2)

 

Cost: Free

 

http://multicommander.com/

Change MAC Address in Windows with Freeware Technetium Utility

Introduction

Do you know what the MAC Address is? If you don’t, and you never dealt with its concept, you probably can skip this article altogether. It will mostly be interesting for network administration and software programming specialists. I am neither one of this category. But I became interested in this utility, since I am responsible for registering and compiling the licenses for customers based on the computer generated IDs. Our software engineers coded the computer ID generation algorithm, based on several components, which should be unique for each computer, but should be stable enough not to cause the ID changes without serious hardware or software modifications. I started to receive the multiple notifications on the supposedly changed computer ID, so the software requests the license to be inputted again, even thou it was already unlocked earlier. When our software engineers reviewed the issue, they noticed that the problem is originated based on the MAC Address changes. That was quite unexpected since the MAC Address should be hard coded in the computer firmware. As response to the inquiry, I have sent the link to this software utility to them to prove, how easy it can be changed.

May be, you will find it useful and you’ll place this interesting utility in your software toolbox, as I did.

Concept

Many people believe MAC address, which is hard-coded in the NIC card cannot be changed. Yes, it’s hard coded and it can be changed only by removing the flash chip from the NIC card, re-programming it with new MAC address, and putting it back on the card. But this software does not change the hard coded MAC address. Technitium MAC Address Changer just instructs Windows to use a different MAC address that has been specified in the Windows registry. If no MAC address is specified to Windows, system uses the default hard-coded one in the NIC to construct Ethernet or IEEE network frames (or simply packets), which are used at OSI layer 2. Windows also changes MAC address of your NIC when Windows Network Bridge is enabled. The first number in the MAC address of the NIC added in the Network Bridge is set to 0x02. Changing MAC address of Network Bridge is not possible in Windows using this software, so this is a known software limitation.

How Does It Work?

This software just writes a value into the windows registry. When the Network Adapter Device is enabled, windows searches for the registry value 'NetworkAddress' in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1- 08002bE10318}\[ID of NIC e.g. 0001]. If a value is present, windows will use it as MAC address, if not, windows will use the hard coded manufacturer provided MAC address. Note that some Network Adapter drivers have this facility as built-in. It can be found in the Advance settings tab in the Network Adapter's Device properties in Windows Device Manager.

Main Features

1. Support for Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista / 7. 
2. Allows you to remove all registry entries corresponding to Network Adapter that is no longer physically installed on the system. 
3. Allows you to configure Internet Explorer HTTP proxy settings through configuration presets or command line. 
4. Identifies the preset applied to currently selected Network Interface Card (NIC) automatically making it easy to identify settings. 
5. Changes MAC address of Network Interface Card (NIC) including Wireless LAN Cards, irrespective of its manufacturer or its drivers. 
6. Has latest list of all known manufacturers (with corporate addresses) to choose from. You can also enter any MAC address and know which manufacturer it belongs to. 
7. Allows you to select random MAC address from the list of manufacturers by just clicking a button. 
8. Restarts your NIC automatically to apply MAC address changes instantaneously. 
9. Allows you to create Configuration Presets, which saves all your NIC settings and makes it very simple to switch between many settings in just a click and hence saves lot of time. 
10. Allows you to Import or Export Configuration Presets to or from another file, which saves lot of time spent in reconfiguration. 
11. Allows you to load any Configuration Presets when TMAC starts by just double clicking on any Configuration Preset File. (*.cpf file extension) 
12. Has command line interface which allows you to perform all the tasks from the command prompt or you can even create a DOS batch program to carry out regular tasks. 
13. Has command line interface for the Installer. 
14. Allows you to export a detailed text report for all the network connections. 
15. Displays all information you would ever need to know about your NIC in one view like Device Name, Configuration ID, Hardware ID, Connection Status, Link Speed, DHCP details, TCP/IP details etc. 
16. Displays total bytes sent and received through the NIC. 
17. Displays current data transfer speed per second. 
18. Allows you to configure IP Address, Gateway and DNS Server for your NIC quickly and instantaneously. 
19. Allows you to enable/disable DHCP instantaneously. 
20. Allows you to Release/Renew DHCP IP address instantaneously. 
21. Displays DHCP lease obtained and lease expires time. (DST time bug removed) 
22. Allows you to configure Interface Metric instantaneously. 
23. Quick keyboard shortcuts for most operations. 
24. One known issue in Windows Vista/Server 2008/7 remains that is TMAC cannot disable any NIC with Non Operational status. 
25. The software is an absolute FREEWARE.

How to Change MAC Address

1. Starting MAC address changer will list all available network adapters.

2. Select the adapter you want to change the MAC address. You will get the details of your selection below.

3. Click Change MAC button, enter new MAC address and click Change Now button and confirm changes you made when prompted.

4. To restore the original MAC address of the network adapter, select the adapter, click Change MAC button and then click Original MAC button and confirm changes you made when prompted.

NOTE: This tool cannot change MAC address of Microsoft Network Bridge. Network Bridge will automatically use the original MAC address of the first NIC added into bridge with the first octet of MAC address set to 0x02.

Programmer: Shreyas Zare

Website and Downloading Link: http://www.technitium.com/tmac/index.html

Applications Launchers - The Best Free Software of 2009 (PC Magazine version)

The article featuring the best freeware 2009, has been posted at the beginning of the year, January 13, 2209. This seven-months old listing will be still interesting for those, who, as I am, decided to completely replace the paid software and services (whenever possible) with the free alternatives.

As the story says, why pay? You've already shelled out money for a computer, there's no reason that what's running on that pricey PC should cost a darn thing. Not in this day and age of amazing freebie software and Web apps. Last year listing covered 157 free utilities and services, while this year coverage has extended to 173 utilities and services.

For convenience, I will split the listing as per categories, adding my comments whenever I have something to say...

Part 1

Applications Launchers

Application launcher is a simple utility that suppose to improve the ability for computer user to access any programs or files on the computer by simply typing the first few letters of the name or clicking the dock icons of graphic interface. Using suitable application launcher can reduce user time for searching favorite program shortcut that they most frequent use, since they are able to can cut down the step of searching for the application executable file again and again. Some of the utilities offer extended functionalities, widening the spec of the software applicability.

There are four items presented in the PC Magazine list.

1. Circle Dock

Website: http://circledock.wikidot.com

OS: Windows

Presentation: Who says a dock has to actually... dock? To the side of the screen, that is. Circle Dock brings up a spiraling launcher interface with all the icons you want to click. Rotate it with the wheel on your mouse and change the skin to suit your desktop.

Overview (My Pick):

Windows application launcher arranges Windows application shortcuts, which you use most often, in circular fashion. The Circle Dock launcher icons arrangement can add or be arrange by dragging them from your desktop or quick launch bar and customize to your heart’s content. Beside that, you can either display your icons in concentric circles, or as a spiral.

What Circle Dock Allows You to Do:
* Launch your programs from a circular dock.
* Drag and drop your files, folders, and shortcuts onto a circular dock that you can resize.
* Rotate the dock with either your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys.
* Change the image shown for the icons and change the skins (compatible with icons and skins for Rocket Dock, Object Dock, etc.)
* The dock appears where your mouse is by pressing a hotkey (default is F1) or your middle mouse button.
* Tested on computers with multiple monitors, Windows XP/Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit, and requires only .Net Framework 2.0.
* Automatically works on all Windows Vista computers and most Windows XP computers.
* A new settings panel that allows you to customize many options. It updates your dock as you make changes. See it change in real time! No need to press an OK button.
* Multi-language capable. Just translate the English.ini file to the language of your choice.
* Change the image used for the dock icons with the easiest method out there: Just set the program to "Icon Replacement Mode" in the right-click menu of the centre icon and you can change all the icon images by just dragging and dropping new PNG images onto them!

* Huge time saver when you are customizing your dock!
* You can now toggle the visibility of the dock by moving your mouse to any edge of your screen. By default, the left and right edges are used for toggling. No need to press a button!
* Reorder the dock items by dragging and dropping them over each other.
* Organize the dock items using dock folders.
* By default, clicking on the centre button does not open the start menu. You can enable this in the settings panel.

Video Presentation:

Circle Dock - Free Apps Launcher in Circle fashion

2. ObjectDock

Website: http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

OS: Windows

Presentation: Replace the Windows Taskbar and Quick Launch toolbar with this Mac-like animated toolbar of icons for all your programs. It comes with a few "docklets" for displaying info like the time, weather, and a Web search form.

Overview: ObjectDock enables you to have more control over how you organize your desktop. Rather than having a bunch of icons on the desktop, these icons can be put into docks. ObjectDock can also be used to replace the Start bar entirely freeing up valuable screen real-estate. With various interaction modes available, you can get the dock availability that's right for how you work.

Fully customizable, super smoothness in zooming, entertaining alternate mouseover effects, libraries full of high-quality images available for use with the program at WinCustomize.com.

Instead of having a cluttered start bar, you have a nice little picture of all your running applications. Shuffling between applications is much quicker, and you can launch the applications you need without wasting time on the start menu.

Screenshot:

3. Launchy


Website: http://www.launchy.net/
OS: Windows, Linux.


Presentation: "Keystroke launcher" is a fancy way of saying "command line," but if you like to type rather than click for control—a practice that goes well beyond app launching—Launchy is your best choice.

Overview:

Launchy is a free windows and Linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

Once Launchy has been started, it hides in the background. You bring it forward by holding the alt key and tapping the space key. You then type in a few keys of the program you are searching for and hit enter once it has been found. You can also make Launchy disappear again by hitting escape or alt+space.

Screenshot:

4. Quicksilver

Website: http://www.blacktree.com/
OS: Mac OS

Presentation: Quicksilver does more from the keyboard than just launch programs. It can act on any item you can find or drag on your Mac. Quicksilver plug-ins add even more functions.

Overview: A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data. When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. It also supports abbreviations, so you can type entire words, or just fragments of each. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes, waiting for the next time you summon it.

Quicksilver's greatest strength, however, is not search. Any item you are able to find, drag, or otherwise pull into its universe is endowed with many potential uses. Hitting takes you to the action field, where you can use the same adaptive search to select what you would like to do. Among other things, files can be emailed, copied, compressed. Text can be modified, transmitted between programs, or searched for on the web. Some actions even support an indirect object, so you can send an item to a person, move files to another folder, or open files with a specific application.

Quicksilver can be given the ability to understand the data inside of files, allowing you to work with data in new, faster ways. Plug-ins add both new items and new actions, allowing you to run scripts, send instant messages, dial phone numbers, look up words in a dictionary, queue up songs in iTunes party shuffle, and much, much more.

Frequently used commands can be bound to triggers, giving you the ability to execute them immediately by hitting a hot key or using the mouse on a corner or edge of the screen.

Advanced Search for Files and Folders in Windows

Description

SearchMyFiles is an alternative to the standard "Search for Files and Folders" module of Windows. It allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content (text or binary search), and by the file size. SearchMyFiles allows you to make a very accurate search that cannot be done with Windows search. For Example: You can search all files created in the last 10 minutes with size between 500 and 700 bytes.

After you made a search, you can select one or more files, and save the list into text/html/csv/xml file, or copy the list to the clipboard.

SearchMyFiles is portable, and you can use it from a USB flash drive without leaving traces in the Registry of the scanned computer.

System Requirements

This utility works on any version of Windows starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 2008.

Using SearchMyFiles

SearchMyFiles doesn't require any installation process or additional DLL files. In order to start using it, simply run the executable file - SearchMyFiles.exe.

After running it, the 'Search Options' dialog-box is displayed. Select the base folders or drives that you want to search, the wildcard, and other search option that you need. After choosing the right search option, click 'Ok' in order to start the search. While in search process, the found files will be displayed in the main window. If you want to stop the search, you can simply click the 'Stop' menu.

After the search is finished, you can select one or more files, and then save the list into text/csv/html/xml file by using the 'Save Selected Items' option. You can also select a single file and open it with the default program by using the 'Open Selected File' option.

Search Options

Here's a small explanation about all available search options:

• Base Folder: Specifies the folder that you want to scan. if 'Scan Subfolders' option is also checked, all subfolders under this folder will also be scanned. You can also specift multiple folders, delimited by semicolon. For example: c:\temp;d:\myfolder;d:\nirsoft
• Excluded Folders: Allows you to specify one or more folders (delimited by semicolon) that you want to exclude from the scan. For example: If you want to scan you entire C: drive, but without C:\Windows and C:\Documents and Settings, you should type 'C:\' in the Base Folder, and 'C:\Windows;C:\Documents and Settings' in the Excluded Folders field.
• Files Wildcard: Specifies the wildcard for scanning the files. You can specify multiple wildcards delimited by semicolon, for example: *.exe;*.dll;*.ocx
• Subfolders Wildcard: Specifies the wildcard for scanning the subfolders. For example, If you want to only scan the subfolders beginning with 'a' letter, you can specify a*.* in this field.
• File Contains: Allows you to search by the content of the files. You can make a text search or binary search. On binary search, you should specify the binary sequence that you want to search in Hex dump format, for example: 'A2 C5 2F 8A 9E AC'.
• File Size: Specifies that you want to search files in specified size range (For example: search all files with size between 238 and 741 bytes).
• Attributes: Specifies that you want to search files with specific attributes. For example: if you want to find all files that are read-only but are not hidden, you should select 'Yes' for Read Only attribute and 'No' for Hidden attribute.
• File Time: Allows you to search files that have been created, modified, or accessed in the specified time range. You can specify an accurate time range (For example: 10/12/2008 12:32:11 - 12/12/2008 13:32:56) or you can specify the last number of seconds/minutes/hours/days. For example, you can search all files that have been modified in the last 10 minutes.
• Search Subfolders: If this option is checked, SearchMyFiles will scan all subfolders under the specified base folders.
• Find Folders: If this option is checked, SearchMyFiles will search for folders according to the other search options. If this options is not selected, SearchMyFiles will only search for files.

Website: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html

Download: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/searchmyfiles.zip

Note that the SearchMyFiles utility is also available in other languages. In order to change the language of SearchMyFiles, download the appropriate language zip file, extract the 'searchmyfiles_lng.ini', and put it in the same folder that you Installed SearchMyFiles utility.

GUI in the following languages is available: Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, and Valencian. 

Your Boss Will Never Find Out!

Dexpot is simple, free for personal use, portable virtual desktop manager. The idea behind dexpot is clear and straightforward. Your desktop became too small for you, or you want organize your different activities by choosing different desktops. For example, as a blogger, I need one set of icons and programs, readily available for my use, as MBA student, I need another set of utilities, and as weekend relaxed computer user, I would need completely different applications.

Huge advantage of creating virtual desktops even more visible if you share your computer with other family members, and you do not want to create different access accounts.

Dexpot offers up to 19 additional work spaces to spread out your work. Instead of one desktop you get 20! And it is without changing any computer settings, and with no additional load on the computer resources.

Platforms: Windows 95/98/ME and NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista Beta (incl. x64).

Implementation environment: Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 SP6.

Product is Free for Personal Use only.

Developers Web site: http://dexpot.de/index.php?id=home

One more advantage of using Dexpot in the office is presented in the clip below:

Using Dexpot to hide your activities

Check your Hard Drive with CheckDisk

Following the hard Operating System crashes and incorrect computer shutdown, it is recommended to test Hard Drive for the possible corruption of the informational clusters.

CheckDisk is a powerful, fast, and portable application for searching and repairing disk errors. It does not require installation and can be run from small external USB drive for easy operations with multiple computers. It is quite similar to the ScanDisk tool or chkdsk.exe, supplied with the Windows operating systems, however, per experts’ feedback, its operational speed and processing quality is quite higher. Software can be used for the Windows Operating systems 2000 and higher, and is able to run on Vista as well.

You can select either standard or full tests, depending on problem character and time available. Software is capable of finding bad sectors on your disk and marking them as such to avoid their use to record data from now on.

The program works with hard disks (including SCSI and RAID), removable media, and CDs as well. This software can be used with no limitations as for private, as for commercial use.

Download from MajorGeeks website: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/checkdisk.html

Repair, clean, and optimize your Windows with 2 clicks

If you use your computer and do not perform regular maintenance, eventually it will show the warning signs: slow operations, occasional crashes, freezing windows, etc. If you use your computer not just for email and Internet, but try new software and games, this process might lead to the serious system clogging. Computer guru have the detailed maintenance plans how to keep their systems on the top of performance results. One of my friends reinstalls Operating System once every 6 months to keep it clean and fresh.

Regular user, as I am, is too busy to spend time on the computer preventive maintenance up to the point, when the performance troubling signs cannot be ignored any more. At this point we are falling to the panic mode and starting all the available magic tricks to restore the lost power.

There are so many software titles available, including freeware and open source, that it is hard to choose one for the service operations. In this publication, I want to present a descent solution for resolving all computer troubles. Advanced WindowsCare Personal is a comprehensive PC care utility that can be characterized by a “one-click approach” to the tasks of protecting, repairing, and general optimizing of your computer. Software will perform the following operations with your PC:

* Removing Spyware and Adware modules, running on your PC.

* Preventing potential Security Threats, altering appropriate settings.

* Privacy Protection.

* Fixing Registry Errors, and optimizing registry.

* Cleaning temporary files and orphans.

* Cleaning startup options, removing unnecessary applications from initializing.

* Repairing Windows operating system.

* Speeding up operating system and optimizing RAM use.

I would not say, that the program is the most effective on the market, but it is definitely one of the most easiest, if not the easiest, to control and operate. If you run into trouble, the Restoration option can return your system to its original configuration.

Software is absolutely free and designed for Windows Vista, XP and 2000.

http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html

A very brief half-minute video tutorial will show you the software operation:

Advanced WindowsCare Personal in 30 seconds