2009 Free Utilities Guide
July 21, 2009 at 09:07:21 AM, by Daniel Shain
Thank God for the internet. I don't know about you, but I say this almost every day, and not just because it gives me a job. The free sharing of information across the world is a wonderful thing. One of the things it has done is enable independent programmers, whether altruistically or with the goal of making a name for themselves, to share their work with you, the user. For free. And that's what this article is all about
What I'm attempting to do is give you a list of free utilities you can use to tweak, clean up, learn about, and otherwise improve the user experience of your laptop. Now for those of you who may be thinking, "well I know how to google search too," I warn you that there is a third category of programmer beyond the altruistic and the ambitious - the hacker. If you've never had an experience with adware, this must be your first time using the internet. If this is not your first time and you still think you have never had any, you need to run a diagnostic immediately. It's hard to find something truly free, and a lot of free software comes with the "price" of malware. Or else it doesn't work.
So take this list for what it's worth - I can guarantee you that everything here is adware free and effective at what it promises to do, because I've tested them. I have also broken this list down into my favorites by category, and with any luck you'll find a category you never even thought to tweak, opening up a whole new world of performance improvements. The world of freeware is always changing, and there are often many programs that are effective at any given task. After you've read my recommendations, I welcome any additions to the list you'd like to make.
System Information Tool
Windows provides some basic ways to see the vitals of your computers, but it often isn't enough. System Information for Windows does a great job of showing you everything you need to see about your computer and more. There are a few things I like in particular about SIW. Although not quite as clean a layout as old stalwart AIDA32 old stalwart AIDA32, it does a great job of keeping things familiar by providing easy access to Windows' own information utilities that you may already be used to viewing. It also provides copious amounts of information Windows doesn't easily capture for you, such as your RAM part and serial numbers, CPU/HDD temperatures, and supported monitor resolutions. It's also a stand-alone program which requires no installation - handy if you like to run software off of your flash drive. Lastly, it has some basic tweaks such as a monitor test and a utility to see passwords hidden behind asterisks, but they're not the selling point.
Hard Disk Maintenance
Hard Disk Cleanup
Hard drives fill up, and sometimes it's the little things that add up. Beyond the recycling bin, temporary files and caches can take up a lot of space over time. The best program I found to take care of this is Windows CleanUp! Windows CleanUp!. For some reason the designer split up the program into two files, a "demo" where you can see what will be killed, and then the real thing which just doesn't ask for confirmation after the first use. There's also a silly toilet flushing sound effect when you run it which you can disable. Aside from that though the product was everything I could ask for - simple and effective. A close second was CCleaner, which had a nicer interface and a few more options, but in testing found about only 1/3 of the files to clean that CleanUp did.
Hard Disk Visualization
Sometimes though, it's not the little stuff as much as it is the big stuff you've just forgotten about. That's where an excellent visualization tool comes in. With JDiskReport you get an easy to read pie (or bar or ring) chart that you can click through, isolating the individual folders or files that are taking up the most space. It also has a few other features, such as a Top50 largest files and a Modified filter, which shows you how large the files are that have been on your computer a year/week/day etc. Some other interesting choices include the rectangular treemap of WinDirStat and the 3D rendering of StepTree, the latter of which is a little more cool than useful.
Hard Disk Defragmentation
Now that we've gotten rid of the little stuff and the big stuff, it's time to tackle fragmentation. Fragmentation occurs naturally over time when data can no longer be stored continuously on a hard drive and must be stored in various physical locations, slowing performance. The best tool I found to defragment is Smart Defrag. You have the option to defrag or fast/deep optimize, as well as scheduling options and an Auto-Defrag which can kick in during idle time and stop automatically when it detects a certain percentage of resource use. With the ability to defrag individual files, Defraggler runs a close second.
Hard Disk Monitoring
Monitoring your hard drive can be a way to keep it chugging along safely for a long time, and also warn you when its life is coming to an end. Active HD Monitor runs in the background and conducts a S.M.A.R.T. analysis as well as guage temperature, allowing you to set warnings to pop up when the hard disk gets too hot. In many notebooks overheating is a serious problem, making this a potentially useful addition. The S.M.A.R.T. check shows you the condition of your disk so you can be wary of impending doom and back up. There is also a scan for bad sectors, and the basic info tab displays helpful details such as model and serial number. Active HD Monitor doesn't take up too much memory, but if you're looking to shed some background megabytes HDD Health is another good choice.
RAM Maintenence
RAM Optimization
There is debate over the usefulness of RAM optimizers, in part because a standard practise of optimizers is to grab every resource possible - effectively freezing your computer - and then to release it all, thus making the most possible RAM free. I found two programs - you can take your pick - that run once, take less than a second, and free up large chunks of RAM without freezing anything. CleanMem works by making a simple Windows API cleanup call, essentially shaving any unused RAM from every process. SweepRAM works by momentarily pushing the program into virtual memory and then letting it come back into RAM, when it automatically takes the minimum it needs to survive. CleanMem gets the nod here because the SweepRAM sounds like it could potentially cause more problems, but both opened up a comparable amount of RAM on my notebook in testing.
RAM Diagnostic
Like it or not, hardware is sometimes defective. RAM in particular is sensitive, and it's worth running a memory test every once in a while, especially if you suspect there is a problem. Mem86 is widely regarded as one of the best free programs for testing memory. The program tests for bad sectors with a series of algorithms, but the basic philosophy is fairly simple - write a cell of memory with a 0, write the adjacent cells with a 1, and then make sure the first cell still has a 0 in it. If your RAM is riddled with bad sectors it is going to under perform, and this test can help you isolate the problem quickly
##ADSENSE##Registry Cleaner
Registry cleaning can be another useful way to boost performance on your notebook, especially if it is older. The registry is in constant use, and improper references left behind by bad uninstalls or orphaned startup programs can clutter it up, making reading less efficient. Registry cleaning attempts to find all the entries that don't belong and wipe them out. It should be noted that this is a dangerous task though - messing with something that shouldn't have been touched in your registry can have catastrophic results, and even if everything goes smoothly the performance gains are likely to be small. However, if you're going to do it the Eusing Registry Cleaner is a fine program to use. On a scan it found over 500 fixes, and it comes with a utility to manage your startup programs. More importantly, it easily allows you to back up your registry and protect yourself from mistakes. Another option is the registry cleaner which is a part of CCleaner, mentioned above. CCleaner found only 100 or so fixes on the same scan (note: finding more fixes is not necessarily better), but more importantly it doesn't let you backup before making changes.
Overclocking
We all want to get a little more out of our computers, and overclocking can be a quick and easy way to juice some extra megahertz out of that processor. However, it's also an extremely quick and easy way to permanently fry your CPU or other important pieces of hardware. Overclocking tells your processor, which is clocked down from its maximum speed by the manufacturer to a level that is expected not to overheat and last for years, to speed up a specified amount. Particularly in laptops, where cooling is tough enough on standard settings, overclocking can have disasterous results. It will decrease the life of your processor too. All that being said, if done right it can provide tremendous performance boosts to laptops both new and old. The easiest free overclockiung utility I have found is ClockGen (- note at time of writing CPUID has put a "coming back soon" page here, but the file can be found here and elsewhere) from CPUID. Simply select your PLL in PLL Setup and then go straight to PLL control, where a series of sliders allows you to set your new speeds. Dangerously simple. Good luck, but don't say we didn't warn you.
With these utilities you should now be able to see everything you need to about your computer, and flush out your HDD, RAM and registry for high performance. The ambitious among you can even overclock now and try for better-than-new performance results. That's a pretty good start, but the list of freeware programs and possible features to tweak is nearly endless. So now that I have shared some information with you via this wonderful internet, feel free to return the favor - what free programs do you regularly use that aren't on this list?
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