The Expert's Favorite Win95 Freeware

Well, it's not that you "can't live without it", but when I want to know any hidden options of a program or Win95/NT itself, I find a lot using RegMon. That's a nice utilitiy which monitors every call of every (or a specific) program to the registry. Since a lot of options are stored there, much problems can be easily solved using it. Of course, you have to know something of the registry to use it appropriately, but I certainly can't live without it.

If you want to use it, you can find it at:

NT-version:
http://www.ntinternals.com/ntregmon.htm

Win95 version:
http://www.ntinternals.com/regmon.htm

BTW.: http://www.ntinternals.com you will find other useful utilities, but lots of them do require some background (programming) knowledge.

Hope it helps you too like it helped me,

Regards, Abel

Well, it's not that you "can't live without it", but when I want to know any hidden options of a program or Win95/NT itself, I find a lot using RegMon. That's a nice utilitiy which monitors every call of every (or a specific) program to the registry. Since a lot of options are stored there, much problems can be easily solved using it. Of course, you have to know something of the registry to use it appropriately, but I certainly can't live without it.

If you want to use it, you can find it at:

NT-version:
http://www.ntinternals.com/ntregmon.htm

Win95 version:
http://www.ntinternals.com/regmon.htm

BTW.: http://www.ntinternals.com you will find other useful utilities, but lots of them do require some background (programming) knowledge.

Regards, Abel

here is the name of a utlitiy that can save you a lot of hours ( it can be downloaded from pc magazine, from the "top 10 utilities", but i don't remember the exact adress:
The utility is Coa32, means change of adress. if you change the location of a program (or a file) from, for example c:\first to d:\second, it can search for all the refernces for the old place and change it to the new place. it checks not only in the registry, but in ini files.

Avi

You can find COA32 at:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/16/01/ut1601.001.html

Or download directly:
ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/pcmag/1997/0107/coa32.zip

If it's not there anymore, try a search at zdnet, and you'll find it.

Abel

Not all Freeware but at least shareware I find useful are:
Microsoft RegClean
More Properties at www.imaginary.co.za
WinHacker at www.winhacker.com
ZtreeWin at www.ztree.com
AmpleNotice at http://www.agoron.com/~granny/
SomePlace also at http://www.agoron.com/~granny/

byrdzu I trust that you will not be closing this off at anytime as I think =your idea is great sharing the names and locations of shareware and freeware we all use.  I hope others will start to contribute too.

Only and the great: Windows Commander 3.0x and Norton Commander
for 95/NT.
WC has several minor bugs, but way faster.
Xdesk - 6 virtual desktops: good app to not overcrowd your desktop
 with windows. Cons: once window opened, it can't be redirected to
 other desktop.
QEMM97: perfect memory manager, no conflicts/lockups, perfect DOS
 management.
CleanSweep: fine program. Also Quarterdeck's product.

ICQ!!!!!!!..hehehehehehheh
Well actually I have this program which its kinda kool its called CyberKit and i think its at shaware.com. Allows you to ping a certain ip address to get its ms time and allows to finger and such...pretty kool program.

I have a great program called winhack that dosen't do anything illegal, but verges on it!!!
you can doall sorts of fun stuff, like rename the recycle bin, and change windows settings.  it's motto is "change windows in ways bill gates never intended"

you can also mess with the boot menu

if you want, i can e-mail it to you, i'm not sure where it can be found on the net, except look for it at hacking sites.

theTerabyte, WinHack as you call it is actuall "WinHacker 95" and is the one I mentioned before, it is available at:
http://www.wojo.com/wedge/wh95/index.html 
a very good program.

oh, didn't see that up there!  it is a cool proggie.
i also thank byrdzu, this thing is a great idea!!!!!

Actually, I thought it might be a good idea!  hehehehe.  I was going to delete the question, but I'll just leave it open.  I've been getting the utilities mentioned here, and they work great!  Keep the good comments going!  ;)

Also,  another freeware proggie that I think is so kool is AboutTime.  It synchronizes you pc's clock to the U.S. Navy's Atomic Clock.  It's free at:

http://www.arachnoid.com/abouttime

It's got servers and such in it too, so others can synchronize to you.  It's very handy if you're on the net alot, and your time keeps seeping off every few days.  It's perfect to put into Dunce's run options, and you can set an option for it to set the time and exit upon startup, also, it can start hidden so it won't pop up in the middle of the screen each time it starts.  I highly recommend it!  =)

Indispensible for fast processors is CPUIdle from
www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~goetz this utility actually cools the cpu, it made 14 degress difference in my case.

And for fast offline web browsing I use WebDown from
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2865/

For all your windows 95/nt shareware and freeware visit the following sites.

http://www.windows95.com
http://www.cdrom.com
http://www.32bit.com
http://www.tucows.com

Cheers
Dane

one of my personal favorites is Acdsee, fast efficent pix browser
also let's not forget
filepile.com
sandpile.com
jumbo.com  

Dunce is stupid, who needs that anyways?  I like CuteFtp, Winzip, More Properties and Hackit.

Well,  different strokes for different folks!

Some of us find Dunce handy!  =)

I like Cache Can it is currently in beta testing, you can try it out at http://www.rcgi.net. I think it is really cool!  But has a few small bugs (mostly spelling)

Ahh!  I have found another tweak at Microsoft!  RegClean is a new little program they have to clean up your registry.  It works very well.  Give it a shot!

Oh!  And you can download RegClean at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/default.asp

Under the directory Microsoft Windows/Windows 95/Updates and Utilities.

:::Snaps fingers:::

Ahh, shoot!  Apparently Microsoft has either removed or moved RegClean somewhere else...

RegClean was rereleased and in some places it has had the letter "a" added to the name.

Look out for the warninf with regclean, I think the readme (in the visual studio service pack?) says it screws up some visual data thingy for visual basic. I never use the it but if you do watch out.

Bslim,

I can't find cyberkit could you post the addy up for me?

I use powwow, to be found at http://www.tribal.com

I remember CyberKit..  I got it at Tucows.....

OK, here's my favorits: Regedit and Notepad     -=LOL=-

Please grade my ANSWER as A

Happy1:))

Anybody know a proggie to log all files accessed?

Oop!  I found the answer I wanted!

  http://www.ntinternals.com/95util.htm

Filemon!  

Thanks, Abel, for suggesting ntinternals!  (RegMon)  So much useful stuff there!!  =)

Great tools guys!

Also, on the Win95B CD are two tools that not many people know about:
HwDiag gives you a listing of all the classes and devices registered by Win95, this helps you find out why a device may be listed as not working, as well as other such things.
Configuration Backup - a neat tool that backs up and compress' the registry

Thanks to all, I use CyberCreek FreeMail, available at http://cnyweb.com/nonags/main.html    It's the best free E-mail program I've found. And Cetus wordpad, an updated WordPad. Get it at the same place. If you're just looking for utilities here's one "MagicRegistry Version 1.0". I don't remember where I got it, but it makes it easy to fix things in your install/remove window. You know when someone uninstalls a program the old fashion way(deleting the folder)

Hmm, that HwDiag is cool. RegClean is avail at www.softseek.com.
Also, ReGet at http://reget.quite.net/, is a reaaly cool downloader.
Dipstick, to test which link is the fastest - at softseek.
Notespad and notepad+
Desktop Themes probably at Softseek
Norton Anti-Virus scanner (the free one)
MicroAngelo
Data grab (multi search util)
URL menu
HTML Pad and AOL Press
Microsoft WEFT (Fonts to graphics)
More Properties
WAssociate - Reall, really cool for playing with file extensions
drWatson
Reg Drop - Register dlls and ocxs with ease (friendly too)
and RFtp, amongst others!

Not freeware but...  4DOS, 4NT and TakeComand/32 by JP Soft.

Does anyone know of a program to list Empty Sub-directories so they can be deleted.  It would also be nice to include the creation date of the directory.

well my favorite program for windows isnt really a windows program, its WINE for linux which lets you emulate the windows environment. for a better one tho u should get wabi by caldera (www.caldera.com) it lets you run mIRC (somewhat) and it makes for a great X screenshot running xdos, wabi, and a buncha linux apps all together :)

I have to agree with Able http://www.ntinternals.com is my
favorite site, they have regmon which is great for finding out where a eval program is putting its time/date stamp for experation.  Filemon is great for seeing which files get touched. Well there are just many awsome "Educational" programs on that site.

What about ERD which is on the Win95 disk in other\misc\erd\  This little utility has saved my ass many time... It backs up the entire registry, autoexec, ini files, sys dat files for a complete recovery.  I run this (eru.exe) before I install any new programs and if I don't like it I uninstall and them and then use the ERD.exe to restore all my files.  This is better than Configback, or trying to clean the registry with RegClean which only does so good.  This is definatly a UTILITY I CAN'T LIVE WITH OUT.

Wow! This is a great thread!  Please keep in mind that if the question isn't answered and if there is no activity for 20 days, it will automatically be deleted.  And that would be a tradegy!

I found this great little Freeware program called Windows Administrator at:
http://www.polbox.com/r/rkrzyzan/winadmin.html
It assists with the desktop configuration but also has an option to configure for the "Memphis" desktop.  I suspect it is available in other languages than English as well as it is written in Poland.

Here's my opinion on good proggies.. some REALLY good progs.

#1. Net Watcher PRO
ftp://130.89.223.160/netwatcherpro22.zip
Net watcher PRO is a utility that logs all network connections to your PC. It's like NET WATCHER, but it keeps a log, and is programmable to kick users off your computer, based upon their user name, or their idle time.

#2 Win-Expose (IO) and Win-Expose (registry)
http://www.shetef.com/wxr95-10.zip (REGISTRY VERSION)
http://www.shetef.com/wxi95-20.zip (IO VERSION)
These two programs monitor IO and REGISTRY access respectivly. They monitor ALL ACTIVITY that programs attempt. I used these two programs to fix a broken network app, I ran expose-IO and found that my broken program was looking in vain for a file that didn't exist on the network (an admin accidently deleted the file). I restored the file, and everything started working. It can be used for finding hidden REG settings, and config files. REALLY COOL

#3 SiSoft Sandra
http://www.winsite.com/cgi-bin/dload/41/win95/sysutil/san220.zip
This program does an array of testing and benchmaking on your system. Pretty cooL!

#4 Winamp
www.winamp.com
This program plays MP3 audio files. REALLY COOL

#5 Cool Edit
www.cooledit.com
REALLY COOL audio editing utility. Blows everything else away

#6 Policy Editor.
on win95 cd.. called POLEDIT.EXE
Cool program to restrict and change win95 accesses.. one of the best things included on the win95 CD.

#7 Doslfnbk
http://www8.pair.com/dmurdoch/programs/doslfn22.zip
Backs up and restores long filenames under DOS. REally usefull for zipping a computer image (along with the long filename image) to make an easy backup of a win95 pc!

#8 Getright
http://www.getright.com/getrt310.exe
Resumes broken downloads. Really good program.

#9 Scitech Display Doctor
http://www.theactivedesktop.com/downloads/sdd651.exe
Lets you do special functions with your monitor/ video card. Such things I've never seen in another program. Such as, manually center the screen, etc.

#10 There are too many programs I really enjoy. Actually, I reccomend looking at the following sites (some are already mentioned above)
www.softseek.com
www.winfiles.com
www.tucows.com
www.mp3.com
www.shareware.com


I hope this helps a ton, feel free to reject if you still need more info

I like TweakUI which is part of the Powertoys available from Microsoft. There's a newer version of TweakUI for Windows 98.

Seem to be straying, howabout seperating shareware and freeware

No util this comment but a suggestion for registry freaks, try using winhacker and regmon at the same time, set the filter to "writes only" and change something with winhacker, now you can see what actualy happens and you no longer need winhacker for this.
Doesn't work for all things though.

And thanks for the great utils.

May I just suggest another good one?

ICQ.

http://www.mirabilis.com/ 
Find more friends from the internet and chat with your friends when they're online.

For the MP3, I prefer the RealPlayer. Better.

Microsofts DirectX Control Panel is Excellent for us DirectX Programmers. It enables Debuging functions and test routines for DirectX allowing problems to be easily resolved.

RegClean Fixes Many Registry Problems And I have many of those. ScanDisk Is By Far A Life Saver.

MS Defrag is a useful Disk Space Saver.

Here are my 2 cents worth:
I use IRFANVIEW to work with every type of graphic file...GREAT freeware.
I also recommend Clean Sweep
I use Deskmenu...good program but don't recall where I got it. Allows access from task bar to desktop icons.
I use PrintKey21 for printing anything with the PrintScreen Key...handy.
And another is TinyTools x-setup2.o. Works like TweakUI but does more.

How about ALLWAYS adding addresses for files so we can download them to see what they are like.  And if someone else knows an address not already included please add it to the list.

Here is more info on what I added to this discussion:
What is IrfanView32 ?

IrfanView32 is a fast FREEWARE image viewer/converter for Win95/NT.

Supported file formats:
JPEG, GIF, BMP, DIB, RLE, PCX, PNG, TIFF, TGA, RAS/SUN, ICO,
AVI, WAV, MID, RMI, WMF, EMF, PBM, PGM, PPM, IFF/LBM and
Photo-CD(Overview Photo-CD support).

Some features of IrfanView:
Preview option, Drag&Drop support, fast directory view (fast moving
through directory), slideshow, batch conversion, print option,
change the color depth and many many more ...

The first graphic viewer WORDLWIDE with Animated-GIF support !
The first graphic viewer WORDLWIDE with Multiple-ICO support !
One of the first graphic viewers with Multipage-TIFF support !

FREEWARE for use at home !

Download: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/download.html

Author: Skiljan Irfan
E-Mail: e9227474@student.tuwien.ac.at
WWW:    http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/

Much fun !

Copyright 1997.1998 By Alfred Bolliger

PrintKey® is a utility for making harcopys of Windows screens in Win95® or NT4.0®
You can only use it in Windows it will not work in Dos or Dos mode !
It will work on any PC from 486 to Pentium® and Need at least 12MB Ram
Any Screen resolution is supported but it will work at best with a resolution
Of  800 x 600 at HiColor or More.
You Need a InkJet or Laser Printer for best result it can be Color or monochrom

Installation:
Download the Latest Version at  http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/3053
Extract it with Winzip® or pkunzip®
And put the printkey.exe in any folder of your choice but if you want to start it automaticly
You must put it in to the startup folder.

Using it :

If you press the Printscreen key on you keyboard the Full Desktop is printed
If you press Alt and Printscreen then the Active window will be printed

If you have questions you can reach me at coolmen@bluewin.ch

What is K/oS X-Setup?



With X-Setup your are able to control most of the hidden features of Windows. There no more need to edit the Key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version..." with RegEdit. Just use X-Setup!

X-Setup is easy to use!
With X-Setup you don't have to know such values like the one above. Just tell X-Setup what you want to do, and it will do the rest.

X-Setup is powerful!
Supporting more than 55 functions, X-Setup is one of the most complete "Hackers" available.

X-Setup is Freeware!
No joke, X-Setup is (like all Programs from K/oS) Freeware, you don't have to pay anything to use it.

Contact K/oS

You may contact K/oS for any reason:


E-mail:      TeXHeX@msn.com

Internet:      http://www.kos.hwc.com

Support BBS:      StarLine +49-6232-629141 (Germany)

You should check out our Internet-Site or our Support BBS if you are searching for other high-quality Freeware-Apps!

K/oS is always searching for new members. If you interested, please send us an E-mail.

Also....the desktop program I mentioned is part of Tweakui

Well.......  Technichally Deskmenu is part of the MS Win95 PowerToys bundle, which is what TweakUI is a part of!   heheh  ;)

www.snadboy.com!
You can get behind the passwords when there is the "*"

byrdzu,
In response to:
"Anybody know a proggie to log all files accessed?"

I found a neat little proggie called InWatch95. It'll record everything before and after an installation (including reg entries). Helped me to find out the stinker files from another program I installed.

If you'll e-mail me I'll shoot you a copy.  And a file splitter/ joiner program that's neat.

byrdzu,
In response to:
"Anybody know a proggie to log all files accessed?"

I found a neat little proggie called InWatch95. It'll record everything before and after an installation (including reg entries). Helped me to find out the stinker files from another program I installed.

If you'll e-mail me I'll shoot you a copy.  And a file splitter/ joiner program that's neat.

OOPS email - hcrick@tstar.net

Hands down, no doubt about it, there is no other #1 freeware program...

#1 greatest utility ever invented
           
              List.com

My personal favorite - and it should be yours too! ;)

(I also like deltree a whole lot - makes getting rid of windows SOOO much easier!)

oh yeah - the greatest TRUE freeware site I've ever found...

www.nonags.com

check it out!

I reciently found a MS utility called doswinkey.  It disables the windows keys when running a DOS program.  It's part of the KernalToys from MS.  It can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/info/shareware.htm

Hi, folks

please, check thread Q.10046816 in lounge.
That's was begin as just some info for Bud, but now
developed to kind of software review <G> similar as here.
Thread is long and before I delete it, if any of you find anything
usefull there, I will be -

Happy
 

I have just recently found a program called SiSoft SANDRA.  It is a system analysis utility.  There is a review of it on DOwnload.com at: http://www.download.com/PC/Result/TitleDetail/0,4,0-35399-g,501000.html
It is very good.