Configinspector is probably the best product you can get for keeping your configuration at your fingertips. It’s a lot like taskman but with detailed configuration information and performance information right on hand. It’s something that is good to keep around and everyone should have it on their system. There is no risk of keeping it around and it only runs when you ask it to.
http://flashdeli.com/config-inspector.php
I am truly amazed and appreciative of the quality that Avast provides to it’s home users free of charge. The Avast suite is a “first class” anti-virus package. I know no better and I’ve seen most. Being an anti-virus vendor, you must establish and continually provide a vigilant relationship with your customer and Avast constantly updates their virus database and they do it as transparently and efficiently as possible for both fee and free customers. I can’t thank Avast enough for the value they provide to us free users consistently. Every home and business user should run Avast. I have no doubt, they are the best, so install their software and put your Virus troubles behind you.
More information from Avast
http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html
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I decided it was time to take another look at the free firewalls. I found an article on LifeHacker and then
an article on ‘Freeware Genius’ (both great ‘Market Sight’ resources) and they led me to a product named Comodo, which I’d never heard of before. I was suspicious but impressed to find a review by PC magazine, which named it as one of the top firewalls (bar none). The research eventually led me to this report by MatouSec, which lists every firewall in the market, evaluates their performance, and identifies which products are free. I was blown away to find Comodo Firewall Pro, which was tagged as freeware, at the top of the list. That sealed the deal so I downloaded and installed it and now I’m a firm believer in Comodo Firewall Pro.
It uses about the same amount of resources as Sygate and Zone Labs, so no surprises there, and I was very satisfied with the simple and straight forward GUI they provide. Now I can say with Confidence that this is the best Firewall on the market, and it’s freeware and that makes it a crucial part of our ‘best of breed’ suite of products. You can download it at the link below!
http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/
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As a side note, that report by MatouSec also provided a table that included link’s to all the firewall companies it reviewed.
Tiny Res Meter
This is the only desktop monitoring tool that I use now. It’s small and it provides all the information you need. I have looked at dozens of products in this category. There are all levels of products and some provide very detailed information but, when it comes to monitoring your resources without sucking up all your resources, this is the best product I’ve found.
CurrPorts is a great program that lets you see what ports you have open and what they are connected to. I’m running this most of the time, mostly because of my own curiosity rather than any real need. I do think it is a good idea for everyone to keep a tool handy that allows you to see what your computer is connected to and gives you the power to kill any of the connections. Have you ever worried that someone with bad intentions was connected to your computer? CurrPorts will show you what ports are open and if
you run it often enough, you’ll be able to identify a connection that is suspicious. CurrPorts gives you the IP address, tells you if the port is TCP or UDP, gives you the path of the process that is running, and it provides other information that will help you investigate an open port. You can shut down any of the ports by right clicking on them and choosing that option. You’ll be surprised how many different connections your computer maintains. I highly recommend that everyone keep CurrPorts on hand and run it sometimes. It’s good to be familiar with everything that you are usually connected to. It will take a while for you to recognize all the connections that are normal. However, Currports does mark a suspicious connection with a pink highlight and it does provide a way to filter the displayed connections. I’m still working to get mine configured well.
Currports does not need to go through an installation process on your computer. Once you download it, it creates a file with a CurrPorts executable. You can put the file anywhere you want (I still put mine in c:\program files) and run it.
Today so many applications automatically assign themselves to your start directory so they get executed while your system is booted up. Eventually this creates a backlog of processes that unnecessarily lengthen the amount of time it takes to turn your computer on. Another problem is that most of these programs don’t just have their .exe or .lnk files executing but they also have .dll files loading and changes to your registry. It gets to be a sloppy mess if you don’t go in and delete the things that you don’t need once in awhile. Today, everyone needs some kind of tool that will allow you to look in your start menu and see what is listed. The problem is, there are several places programs can store these files that start when your computer boots up. There are a number of tools out there that will tell you what is in the start menu but none, that I’ve found, do the job that the Systernals Autorun program does. It lists everything and allows you to deselect any of the files that load on startup. It also allows you to save the file and it will compare it for you at a later date.
There are tools that have a nicer GUI and I use those sometimes, but when I really need to pin things down this is the ‘goto’ program. Sadly, everyone needs to have this program loaded on their PC and they have to be familiar with running it. Otherwise, it’s going to take you a long time to boot and you’re going to waste a lot of resources. So download this file, run it, and be amazed at all the junk that starts when you boot your system. One word of warning, don’t go through and shut off a bunch of the Windows services the first time you look at things. Just close the things you are sure you put on the system and no longer need. Eventually you’ll get more knowledgeable and you’ll know what items it makes sense to turn off. Also, after you run the program, save the file before you do anything else. Then you’ll always know that your system can run with that saved configuration.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/Autoruns.mspx
Filemon is the utility that I use when I can see that my system’s CPU isn’t stressed and the memory looks available but my system is really slow or it seems like it is always running a lot. Besides CPU and Memory there is another thing that you should take a look at and that is what files are opening and closing on your disk. One time I had installed one of the popular antivirus software packages and I couldn’t figure out
why my system was slow when both my memory and CPU looked like they had plenty of availability. So I booted up Filemon and I immediately found out what was going on. I couldn’t believe the amount of file open and close commands SpySweeper was initiating. It brought my system to it’s knees. I don’t want you to think that I have a total dog of a system. It’s an average system that someone would buy, maybe a little light on RAM with only 512k and I do run more things at once on my machine than the average user but SpySweeper was killing my system with disk accesses and I didn’t know what was going on until I ran Filemon. Now I use Filemon every time I see my system running amuck and I can always get the answer from the utilities I run. Filemon is the probably the best way to tell what is happening to your system. It gives you a window that shows exactly what files are accessed and by what program.
Everyone should keep Filemon on hand, just in case you feel like your system is on a runaway mission and you don’t know what caused it. Filemon is a small program that doesn’t even require an installation. Just download the file, unzip it, and run ‘filemon.exe’ and the secrets will be revealed!
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/Filemon.mspx