Free software every day

[MilesAhead]

WinUtilities 6.2 any good?

Is anyone a user of WinUtilities? I'm wondering because I noticed a giveaway for version 6.2. They supply a reg user name and reg number so you can reinstall. It's just a couple of versions behind the latest with no updates.

I'm reluctant to use many tweakers since if you make a dozen adjustments in one shot and stuff goes sour it's a mystery which tweak hosed it.

But there are a few good ones here and there and it's always good if you happen to find another gem.

[dr_ml422]

This site I've tried and find very reasonably safe to use their tweaks. good stuff.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html

[dr_ml422]

@gonwk if you use image backups for disaster recovery, when you lay the image back on you get back all installed programs. Another good reason to do image backups. Paragon Drive Backup Express is free. Has a version for Vista64 too.

I'm curious w/these image backups. I got Acronis now n played w/it and did a restore just to test. It worked great, although I noticed it was running on startup so I took care of that.

1 ? to be sure. If I do a complete image backup of my whole drive including os on another drive, can I just swap drives in the event of some quote disaster, and have everything set to go w/out a clean install of the os and then restoring from the backup to original drive? Seems like it should as xp has plug n play, but I'm not sure.

[MilesAhead]

I don't know about acronis. With Paragon you get a boot CD. If your system is hosed you boot and restore the image from an external drive or over a network. How it handles restoring to different drives from different manufacturer I'm not sure. I'd ask about particular scenarios on the user forum for the product you have. They all have different little wrinkles.

[dr_ml422]

Acronis will clone your entire drive either on a disc if it fits and not that many files or onto another drive. I see this as being more of a feature than booting up again even from cd/dvd or external onto same drive that just got hosed. Thing I liked so far about imaging period is not having to tweak when doing a clean install and of course the settings in ff etc... The apps. wasn't that bad as a flash drive would suffice. But the whole process of waiting for a reinstall was pita.

I've been pulling all niters lately catching up, so I think maybe today I'll clone the whole drive onto another 1 and then put the cloned 1 in n see what's up. I wonder if this might b a workaround for you know what. Prolly not as it most likely has some of your mobos settings on there or vice versa. Hmmm.

[MilesAhead]

I'm not sure exactly what the Paragon Drive Backup will do. They make a bunch of related products and likely they all use the same engine. I'm sure there's a lot of overlap. But what I was getting at is if you replaced a dead drive you could probably boot the CD and just restore onto it as long as the boot CD had drivers for the drive. They support quite a few drive types and configurations so I would guess you'd be good to go. I don't particularly like to hang drives on a cable and mess with jumpers to clone stuff. If you do it all the time then it's second nature like anything else, but the first time is when you make all the mistakes. If I only do it every 5 years then it will be mistakes every time for no good reason. I'd rather just read off the external and lay it on the new HD.

edit: now that I think of it, the new HD should be compatible with the driver used on the old or else boot up might be sticky.

[dr_ml422]

That way you're using 2 drives though. The new 1 and the external. It's almost like doing a reinstall except all your apps. n settings would be intact. sata drives have no jumpers. so I'd think just plugging the cloned drive w/of course your backup which will include everything including drivers for your computer etc... would be ready to go. no booting. no plugging external. now i'm going to format the sata drive i have and then clone it. then I'm going to take out the drive from my PC and put the cloned drive. Unless there's something else that would interfere I see no problem turning on the computer and using it.

Btw, since you're always programming, why don't you try to put together some executable software that won't install, but have access to the net for updates. That would be awesome. I used that throwaway Kapersky AV Chewy hooked you up w/yesterday. It's a executable, won't install, but it can't go to the net and it's way huge, over 40Mb. Now imagine that installed and attaching itself to run on startup or just b there. Took 15mins. to scan also. It'll do its job but I can't see having a monster like that hogging up anything. You'd go nuts.

[MilesAhead]

Yeah I guess the difference is the cloner just copies everything to the other drive where the HD backup program creates an archive of compressed files to save space. And if your drive is dead then you have to open the box anyway, so nothing is saved by my method.

I don't get what you mean about the Kapersky thing and the programming. Since then I've tried Malware Bytes and I like that one. I like to just use the scan not the shield stuff. Most of those things when I install them I set it not to install the real-time protection but they do anyway. I don't like software that tries to control you and not the other way around. But then again I liked cars better when they had points plugs and condenser. Not some computer deciding if you'd get spark or not.

[dr_ml422]

Miles doesn't Paragon have option to copy everything to another hdd? Guess if it does it'll compress the files anyway, or will it do a str8 1 to 1 copy to another hdd?

I just finished w/cloning my hdd and right now I'm using the clone to post. Unbelievable. Everything cloned exactly, and it took not more than couple minutes. I just unplugged both drives from their connections and switched. Boom I turned on the computer and wow. I can't see anyone not getting this. I'm a lil slow, but I get there. If you could lay your hands on this don't hesitate.

Now about the Kapersky thing. What I meant was that there must be a way to create a non-installable .exe proggie whether AV or not that'll hit the web for updates w/out being installed. Just stay as a .exe like Kapersky. Just as they have online scanners that'll come on to your PC n do their thing, it would be great to have the opposite. An app. that'll go online w/out being tied to your drive n controlling you as you say. The reverse of what Kapersky is would be awesome. start a .exe and run it, let it look 4 updates if there are any then close it back up, never it being installed. try it maybe you could come up w/something if even a lil app.

I stopped avira from loading on startup, and when I went to check manually to make sure it was on, it was. The icon wasn't in the bottom right as it goes when it starts from startup. You're right, somehow they'll become resident. Avira not bad though n very small footprint if any to complain about.

Now I think I'll use WD Data LifeGuard and blank the hdd I just made a clone of. Either that or leave it alone just in case the one I have goes dead. It's from my OEM n so if goes dead I'd have to blank it for warranty if you know what I mean. Didn't know they only give OEM's 5 yr. life in regards to warranty. Oh well I'll just build another 1 if I have to.

[MilesAhead]

It looks like Paragon breaks it out into a separate product. Paragon Drive Copy. I notice there's no Express edition for that one. Too few features to cut anything off!! The free one would be the same as the personal edition. I just thought of something. If you had one of those external drive stations where you just snap the drive in, you could make a backup of your OS and installed programs and restore to it. Then just plug another drive in. You'd have backups all ready to install in the PC. Just install in the tower and boot!!

afa the anti-virus thing it's really a bummer that Sandboxie doesn't work in 64 bit. That and Unlocker I miss on the 64 bit side.

[doctorhardware]

I could not live with out the unlocker program.

[MilesAhead]

You can use Process Explorer to free the handle but it's not as clean. I think the guy who did Unlocker is still trying to figure out how to get the 64 bit shell extension. That's the trouble is a lot of programming tools that do things quick easy and stand-alone, like Dephi 5, are never going to have a 64 bit version. We need some good free 64 bit compilers and IDE tools.

[dr_ml422]

By external drive stations you mean a external hdd, or a pc that's run by a external drive? Anyhow there seems to be a fine line here between restoring a hdd to its former state and backing up n replacing the hdd fully. When restoring its almost like a repair disc, but when replacing the whole os n apps. w/a backedup or cloned copy you're getting rid of the whole old hdd which of course was hosed for some reason, so why even bother w/a restore?

I hooked up a regular 80Gb wd sata to a sata data cable n power connector, sat it inside a extra cage that came w/my build w/the case open, and cloned the HDD on my Dell in about 3mins. or so. Then just took out the resident hdd, left the cables intact and unhooked the cloned hdd and connected it to the primary cables. finished. Powered on n everything was just how I left it. Unreal. I don't see anything out there matching Acronis's abilities, and it gives you options to format a hdd, create partitions, and like you mentioned picking n choosing what to copy. But why bother? The automatic clone feature does everything in 1 click.

[MilesAhead]

The external is those plastic cube things with a USB connection. You snap a Sata drive into the cube and push a button to release it. It's just a plastic HD enclosure with a snap in feature. The top of the internal drive sticks out. Basically you are plugging a drive in like it was a floppy disk. I'm thinking though if you had your basic setup for some dedicated task like Chewy does you could clone a couple of drives while the HD is still healthy. If it craps out just plug in your "slipstreamed" drive from your store of backups. Maybe that's too mass production I dunno'.

I looked at Acronis when I was picking out my hd backup software. Just seemed like their support forum had too many stuck customers with setups similar to mine. If you look on Gizmo's 46 best freeware it mentions some of the problems. But if you are on a setup that's trouble-free I'm sure it has great features.

If you were just cloning identically sized drives then you could just use that Windows freeware that uses a port of the Linux dd command to copy sector by sector. Doesn't adjust size but if you just want an identical copy it should do the trick for free.

One trouble with it though is you sit around while it copies empty sectors. Copies every sector whether it is "used" by the file system or not.

[Abuilder]

Is anyone a user of WinUtilities? I'm wondering because I noticed a giveaway for version 6.2. They supply a reg user name and reg number so you can reinstall. It's just a couple of versions behind the latest with no updates.

I'm reluctant to use many tweakers since if you make a dozen adjustments in one shot and stuff goes sour it's a mystery which tweak hosed it.

But there are a few good ones here and there and it's always good if you happen to find another gem.

Miles
I missed this post. I had a look at WinUtilities but like most utilities like this I tend to steer clear of the one click fix all packages. The only one I use is one that Blu posted about a few times and that is Glary utilities. It has a one click fix all part too but it also lets you run modules one by one and restore if it breaks anything. + it's free