System Explorer is a mix between Process Explorer and Autoruns from Sysinternals. It reveals many information related to running processes, services and tasks and gives insight into additional system related information such as loaded drivers, open connections and Internet Explorer Add-ons like Browser Helper Objects.

Every function of System Explorer is always only one click away. Each function displays information that can be sorted in various ways. The services tab for instance can be sorted by name, service name, status, startup type, service type and directory.

A right-click on an individual item, a service for instance, adds more options like opening the Registry reference of that item, open the file directory or perform a search on the Internet to find out additional information about it. It is possible as well to stop, start and delete items in System Explorer which comes in handy if you want to check the autostarts of the system or remove drivers that are no longer needed.

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This is this years last Software Updates article and I will continue listing all updated applications that have been written about here at Ghacks of the last seven days on every Wednesday. I still hope that you find this list useful and helpful in determining which software that you use has been updated.

I thought that this week would not have that many software updates but oh boy was I wrong. This week was the week with the most software updates ever since I started the series which meant lots of work for me to list everything neatly and write a short description so that everyone - even those who do not know the software - get a good understanding of what the software does.

Let me know if you did find a software that has been updated but not mentioned here so that I can add it to the list and add the site to the list of observed websites so that it will be included in future articles.

continue reading "Software Updates Week 52 2007"

I asked everyone to submit their top five applications of 2007 in a thread entitled The best software of 2007 and it received a good amount of replies. It took me a while to compile the list of software and order it so that the software mentioned the most would make top spot.

I would like to thank each and everyone for participating in this little survey and hope that we will see even more comments next year when I will ask the question again. I’m a bit astonished that K-Lite Codecs made it into the top three, never thought that this would be possible.

Firefox made number one spot which was not that unexpected with CCleaner close behind (only 2 votes less). My favorites did not make it that far in the list which means that I have to write more about them to influence everyone, hehe. I divided the list into Software with more than 1 vote and Software that received exactly 1 vote. Links have been added to each software so that it is easier for you to visit the homepage and download the software.

continue reading "The best software of 2007 results"

I think we can all agree on the fact that the Adobe Reader is bloated if you only use it for opening PDF documents. It comes with so many plugins that the loading time is sometimes longer than the reading time of the document that you opened. I have been using a software called Adobe Reader Speedup to speed up loading times by disabling plugins that I did not need. This had the result that the Adobe Reader would open almost instantly just like his alternative Foxit PDF Reader.

I discovered another alternative by accident today which is called Adobe Reader Lite. You might already know similar products, such as Quicktime Lite or Real Player lite, that strip advertisement and unnecessary plugins and features from those applications to make them more responsive, faster loading and lower their memory usage.

Adobe Reader Lite can only be installed on the system if prior versions of Adobe Reader have been removed. I did remove the 175 Megabyte Adobe Reader 8 installation from my system and began the installation of Adobe Reader Lite. After the installation finished - with no option to choose a directory to install to - it occupied 45 Megabytes of space on my hard drive. That’ 130 Megabytes less, a good start.

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Many download websites and developers display a so called MD5 hash code of the application that you want to download on their website which can be used to verify the integrity and authenticity of it. This can be done by comparing the MD5 hash code of the downloaded file with the one on the homepage where you did download it from.

The hash has to be the same, if it is not either the download went wrong or someone tampered with the file in some way. This could be that a virus or trojan was added to it for instance.

HashTab is a Windows Shell extension that adds a File Hashes tab to the properties window when right-clicking a file. It does display the hashes of several algorithms including MD5 or CRC32 and even has a button to easily compare hashes. That’s better than manually trying to compare the 32 digit+ hashes.

continue reading "Verify the integrity and authenticity of files"