Good System And Network Management Tools Are Sometimes Free

Market Wire, 20050229

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free software, and lots of it. While the Linux operating system is the most famous form of free software, there are also many no-cost applications and tools available on the Windows platform. But only a handful are truly free and, at the same time, offer real value to system and network managers running their sites on Windows. Here are some of the best:

RegCleaner Version 4.3

Developer: Jouni Vuori Download size: 540KB Works with: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP. Limited support for Win 95.

Download from: www.vtoy.fi/jv16/index.php

This is a very simple-to-use desktop tool written by Finnish developer Jouni Vuori for cleaning up old programs or even those installed without your knowledge. The product is largely self-explanatory, but it does come with a help file. As its name implies, RegCleaner cleans up the registry and has several additional features besides. It has seven tabs for its main functions:

- Software -- This lists any software contained in the registry, giving the name of the author, the software name and its age; listing items as "new" if they were not in the registry last time you ran RegCleaner. To select software for removal, click on the box next to it and then click on the "Remove Selected" button at the bottom of the frame. - Startup List -- This helps you keep your system running as smoothly as possible by eliminating unnecessary programs from the startup list. Even if you have cleaned up this list previously, some applications automatically add themselves to this list when installed, so you should check this list regularly for any new items. - Uninstall Menu -- This lists all the programs that can be uninstalled through Windows (Control Panel -- Add/Remove Programs). If you delete a program, rather than uninstalling it, the uninstall function still remains. Here you can remove these from the uninstall list. You can also uninstall any exiting programs by selecting them and then clicking on the "Uninstall" button. - File Types -- This lists out all the file extensions and file types which you can open by double clicking. If you have removed the program associated with that file type, you can remove the file type here. - New File -- If you right-click on the desktop and select "New" it will present a listing of file types that you can create. Different programs will automatically add themselves to this list. Using this function in RegCleaner, you can remove the ones you don't use regularly, or add ones you do. Unfortunately, certain programs will re-add themselves to the list once you delete them. - Shell Extensions -- This lists the file associations for commands that are listed when you right click on an item. You can delete any you don't need. - Backups -- Whenever you move an item using any of the other tabs, it gets backed up here so you can restore it later.

A note of caution on RegCleaner, however. It is not a program that you would want to leave on desktops where untrained users can find it and delete registry items, but it is an easy tool for administrators to keep the systems uncluttered.

Diskeeper Lite

Developer: Executive Software Inc. Download Size: 9.77MB Works with: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP.

Download from: www.execsoft.com/freeware/diskeeper-lite/download.asp

One welcome freeware is the new Diskeeper Lite, a free version of Executive Software's Diskeeper 7.0, the network disk defragmenter of choice for more than 97 percent of the corporate market. It contains the latest defragmentation technology like the full version, but is designed for standalone machines.

"File fragmentation can negatively affect operating system speed and performance," says Microsoft's Michael Kessler. "To maintain peak performance when using Windows 2000, the condition of your disks should be analyzed on a regular basis--preferably once a week for moderate-to-heavy use; less frequently for intermittent use--and defragmentation performed as needed."

To address this issue back in the '90's, Microsoft had Executive Software develop a stripped-down version of its Diskeeper defragmentation utility for inclusion with Windows. If you are using Windows 2000 or later versions of the operating system, you have this tool under the name of Microsoft Disk Defragmenter (MDD) or Windows Disk Defragmenter.

The release of MDD, in fact, signaled the end of Diskeeper Lite for almost two years. After more than half a million downloads, Executive Software withdrew its freeware utility. User demand continued, however, and just a few weeks ago, an updated tool was finally released, once again as unrestricted freeware. Result: Since the relaunch, Diskeeper Lite racks 10,000 downloads per week, almost all of them from users who already have MDD.

So why replace one free utility with another? Because technology doesn't stand still. To begin with, in the four years since the development of MDD the sizes of hard disks and the files they contain have rapidly grown. The Microsoft utility wasn't designed to rapidly defragment today's commonly used 40/60/100GB disks not to mention the larger file sizes that now prevail. Executive Software, meanwhile, has continually upgraded Diskeeper. New algorithms and a slicker defragmentation engine mean that it performs the job three to five times as fast as the built-in utility, according to tests conducted by NSTL. But that is not the only advantage.