Filehandling, compression, encrypting, burning, mounting, backup, windows tweaks

Compression

7-zip is better, faster and has more options then winrar and CO with multi-window file commander unnecessary http://www.7-zip.org/

Backup

Cobian Backup is all you will ever need (Email: Thunderbird → copy the profil folder Outlook-> copy all mails with folder structure) https://www.cobiansoft.com http://www.educ.umu.se/%7Ecobian/cobianbackup.htm

File Commander

The in my mind unbeatable tool is the TotalCommander. I have bought the license, but the shareware version is full functional and only reminds you at the start that you are only suppose to use it for 30 days. For students the license is very cheap and i could recommend to buy it. https://www.ghisler.com/index.htm

Real Freeware:

mucommander works on windows/linux/mac and can run from a usb stick only, FTP and compression (rar,tar,zip,…) http://www.mucommander.com

in case more then 2 windows are needed a very small tool is Q-dir  http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/Q-Dir

quite usefull is  also the freecommander. It works great under windows but maybe also under other platforms http://www.freecommander.com/index.htm

File Structure overview

while the tools above allow a easy handling of files and folders they are not so strong in finding folders or files that take up to much space. Several programs presents a given drive or subfolder graphical mann. “space eaters” are then easily identified. This is a small tool for windows only: http://www.hdgraph.com/  or the tool “Scanner” from this page (my favorite) http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

This is a java based crossplatform tool that  found particulary usefull: http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/

Mounting Burning of CD’s and images

Burning

With infra recorder you have a nice free burning program  http://infrarecorder.org/

Virtual CD

To mount a iso file there are many different programs try to mount them directly in windows, this works in most new versions. Otherwise these tools might help: wind cd emulator (I think most versatile!!) http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/

Encryption

The whole file mounting can be done encrypted which might be handy from time to time

I found truecrypt uefull for this, which has now been replaced with Veracrypt (that can open also truecrypt achieves) both make one large containers, these are then handled as virtual drive and one can put files in it. This is not very practical for use with cloud services because then the whole package has to be synched. the software can be installed or used as stand alone program (exe file) that is kept with the container. The encryption is strong.

Veracrypt: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads.html   or  https://sourceforge.net/projects/veracrypt/

For use with larger amounts of smaller files that are synchronized over any of the cloud services I would recommend to use a different tool. See  Internet - network tools: Cryptomator :

Windows system tools

Working with the windows system path is a pain. This windows patheditor makes things much more convienient http://patheditor2.codeplex.com/ For most other works with windows a fitting tool can be found on the microsoft sites.

The Sysinternals suite contains a fundus of very powerfull tools that can be downloaded as a package or separate: Suite: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/

I regularly use Autoruns: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns I daily use ProcessExplorer: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

The best thing, they are for sure virus free and work well with windows

Shell with Systemrights on Windows:

download PsExec from Microsoft Sysinternals (part of the package if you downloaded it whole). Move the file psexec.exe somewhere in the path, open it with “psexec -s -i cmd” (e.g. though a shortcut)

In later windows version many of the most used tools are hidden. A good trick is to create a special folder that contains all the tools you might be missing. Create an empy folder in the location you want (e.g. desktop) and rename it to: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}