I recently downloaded a software DVD ISO image from a vendor’s website, burned it to DVD, and tried copying it to a server. No luck, the DVD was bad. That was the second DVD, the burn on the first DVD failed outright. Since I didn’t really need a physical DVD except as a way to get the files I decided to finally take the time and look for a program that would extract the files from the ISO image. Some paid programs came up at the beginning of the search [...] Read the rest »
NewsFire Now Free
NewsFire joins NewsGator on list list of free RSS feed readers available for the Mac platform. I got NewsFire as part of a past promotional bundle. It was my first real news reader, unless you want to count the reader that was built into Yahoo Webmail at the time. It had a nice interface and was simple to use, but after awhile I switched to Google reader. Not because it was free, but because I liked using it better and it did what I wanted it to. As the announcement [...] Read the rest »
SyncToy – Free Backup Utility (Windows)
SyncToy is a free utility from Microsoft that runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista. The latest version is version 1.4 which was released in October 2006. At it’s basic level SyncToy allows the synchronization of two directories. In this article I’ll show how I’ve used it to schedule backups to an external drive. The specifics can be changed to meet your specific needs. I started looking into alternative backup solutions when the windows software that came with the Maxtor external drive proved buggy. Requirements My requirements are simple: Must [...] Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #3
Upgrades – Patches – Please Stop the Madness It seems like all I did this past week was patch and upgrade. I already mentioned the iWeb ’08 update. Microsoft released 9 security updates so it took awhile to patch my VMs. Apple also updated Boot Camp to version 1.4 and I got around to updating it this week. VMWare Fusion also moved out of beta recently. I’d been running the beta version on my MacBook and finally got around to upgrading it to the final release. I haven’t upgraded to [...] Read the rest »
Free Disk Space Utilities for Mac
In my previous post about my problems with Superduper! I mentioned I used two free utilities to try and find out where all the space went. Disk Inventory X The first utility is Disk Warrior Inventory X which provides a graphical representation of your files. When the program starts you’re asked to pick a drive or folder which is then scanned and the main screen is shown. Click the picture to see it full size. The left pane shows the typical expanding tree view where you can scroll through looking [...] Read the rest »
AutoRuns for Windows
AutoRuns for Windows is a free utility from Microsoft (that they inherited when they bought SysInternals). It shows absolutely everything that starts when Windows starts and when you logon. It doesn’t just show the programs, it goes deeper to show the DLL’s loaded. There’s 15 different categories, from “Logon” to “Network Providers”. The screenshot below shows the main screen (click image to load full size). Clicking on a startup item shows you the information about it in the bottom pane. The information is similar to the information in file properties. [...] Read the rest »
Process Explorer For Windows
Have you noticed in Taks Manager that the svchost.exe process has multiple instances and uses a lot of memory, it may even be the biggest memory user on your Windows PC. Have you then tried to figure out what it does? In this KB article Microsoft says it’s …a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) This isn’t much help. But Process Explorer For Windows is a free utility from Microsoft (that they inherited when they bought SysInternals) that can answer that question. Process Viewer [...] Read the rest »
