A Computer Repair Utility Kit You Can Run From a Thumb Drive
Technibble, the Australian site for aspiring computer techies, recently released the second version of its popular Computer Repair Utility Kit, a collection of 57 hand picked tools to help you diagnose and repair your Windows machine.
While all of the utilities are freely available online, this all-in-one kit saves you the trouble of searching for and downloading them individually. Most of the applications don't require installation and the kit can be run directly from your thumb drive.
Although the kit is extremely useful as it offers all of the tools in one neat package, we thought it might be useful to describe each application and rate it based on the level of experience required for use. We've used the following rating system:
Beginner: Basic computer skills
Intermediate: Need to be familiar with some computer jargon
Expert: Must be comfortable changing system settings
File Management
CCleaner gives your PC a tune-up by removing unnecessary files and registry information, freeing up valuable disk space and making your machine run faster.
Installation required: No - Level: Beginner
JkDefrag reorganizes files on your PC to improve performance.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
DriveimageXML allows you to backup your entire PC contents, so it can used in emergencies or for recovery of individual files.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Explore2fs allows you to access files on Unix partitions or within Unix image files without having to load Unix.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Double Killer helps you find and easily remove duplicate files which are using unnecessary disk space.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
Deep Burner makes it easy to backup information to a CD or DVD
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
7 Zip lets you create and extract from most of the popular archive file formats
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
The PC Decrapifier uninstalls many of the common trialware and annoyances found on PCs when you bring them home from the store. A list of software that it can detect and remove can be found here. PC Decrapifier displays a list of software it detects and then lets you choose what you want removed.
Level: Basic - Installation required: No
Information
Process Explorer is Task Manager on steroids. Find out what files, registry keys and other objects applications have open, even which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each application.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
System Information gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings, and then displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of MS-Office, Windows, Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer. This utility can be useful if you lost the product key of your Windows/Office, and you want to reinstall it on your computer.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: Yes
Autoruns provides information about all applications which are automatically started by Windows at boot time or when you log in.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
HWMonitor lets you easily see temperatures of the main components of your PC.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
GPU-Z lets you view information about the graphics component of your PC.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
WirelessKeyView retrieves the type and value of previously used wireless network keys/passwords stored in your computer, then lets you easily save all the information to a text/html/xml file.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
TreeSize Free allows you to view the amount of disk space used by any folder on your PC. Because scanning is done in a thread, you can see results as the application is running.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Game Key Revealer retrieves the CD-Key and serial numbers for all installed games on your computer allowing you to easily.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
USBDView allows you to review the software which has been installed on the PC to manage hardware (MP3 players, external disk drives, cameras etc) connected to any of the USB ports.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
TrID allows the type of file (Word, Excel, PDF) to be determined by looking inside the file. Useful when Windows cannot determine the type of file due to the extension being changed or removed.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
CodecInstaller displays the video codecs currently installed on your PC. Additionally, if you are unsure which codecs you need for a specific file, CodeInstaller will show you.
Level: Expert - Installation required: Yes
Unknown Devices helps you determine what those unknown devices in Device Manager really are if Windows can't figure it out by itself.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
GSpot analyzes video files to determine the video and audio codecs required and offers solutions if necessary.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Repair Tools
Norton Removal Tools lets you easily remove specific Symantec products.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: Yes
McAfee Removal Tool lets you easily remove McAfee consumer products.
Note: Does not prompt for confirmation when run.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: Yes
LSPFix restores Internet access caused by faulty Layered Service Provider software.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Dial-a-fix is an advanced utility for 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows that repairs Windows files and registries; fixing common problems easily.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Recovery
Recuva recovers files which have been deleted from your computer, including files emptied from the recycle bin as well as files deleted from memory cards or MP3 players.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Restoration recovers files which have been deleted from your PC, memory cards or MP3 players. It also works with FAT and NTFS as well as digital cameras cards.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
PhotoRec recovers files which have been deleted or damaged from memory cards. It works by ignoring the filesystem and going after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
DBXTract recovers e-mails from damaged Microsoft Outlook Express data files.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Network Tools
Wireshark allows network packets to be viewed and helps diagnose network problems.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No, but starts WinCAP installer which can be cancelled.
Note: Can be used on Mac and Linux
Network Scanner lists which type of resources are available on the network.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
PuTTY is a SSH and Telnet client that allows you to login to Unix computers or devices (such as the iPhone).
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Network Stumbler is a wireless network scanner that lets you see network availability and signal strength.
Level: Expert - Installation required: Yes
Virus and Malware Removal Tools
ClamWin scans your PC for viruses and helps remove them.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Note: ClamWin Free Antivirus does not include an on-access real-time scanner. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware.
RootkitRevealer is an advanced rootkit detection utility that outputs a list of Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
ComboFix is a specialized cleaning tool that allows the manual removal of spyware infections.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
SmitFraudFix is a command prompt tool which removes "Desktop Hijack malware."
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Roguefix detects and cleans Windows XP computers that are infected with fake security warnings and fake 'Blue screens of death.'
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
HijackThis scans your computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs.
A separate application called HijackReader reads the log files create by HijackThis and provides advice on what to do.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
SUPERAntiSpyware will detect and remove spyware, adware, malware, trojans, keyloggers, dialers, and worms.
Note: It does not include real-time blocking or scheduled scanning.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: Yes - But it can be cancelled and the app will still run.
Malwarebytes will search and destroy malware, but this free version does not include realtime protection, scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: Yes
Miscellaneous
Mozilla Firefox Portable Web browser
Mozilla Firefox Portable Edition is a standalone application you can run from a self-contained folder on your desktop or your portable drive.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
JavaRa removes old and redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Monitor Tester helps you adjust the settings of your monitor to get the best picture.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Helps you find any pixels on your LCD screen which are "stuck" or "dead"
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Checks any flash drive for errors and displays their actual capacity.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Note: English translation via Google Translate
Double Driver allows the device drivers that came with your PC when you bought it to be backed up. Useful when the Windows Operating System has to be reinstalled which in turn requires the device drivers to be reinstalled.
Level: Expert - Installation required: No
Allows PDF documents to be viewed without having to reinstall Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Level: Beginner - Installation required: No
Revo Uninstaller helps you easily remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have had problems uninstalling them from "Windows Add/ Remove Programs."
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Tweaks
TweakUI is part of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP and lets you change various settings that are not exposed in the default user interface.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
VistaTweaker is a complete tweaking utility designed for Windows Vista allowing you to change settings that can not be changed by using Control Panel.
Level: Intermediate - Installation required: No
Scripts
These scripts do not need to be installed however, they will take immediate effect once they are run, so make sure you really want them before clicking.
Quickly Make a System Restore Point
A VBScript file which creates a Windows restore point called "Technicians Quick Restore Point". This allows the Windows system to be easily restored should any changes you make when fixing problems make them worse.
Reset Network
A Windows batch file which will invoke the Windows IP configuration utility, ipconfig and does the following:
Obtain a new IP address from your DHCP server (your home router or modem). - Flushes the local DNS cache - Re-registers DNS names.
Clear Print Spooler
This stops the spooler service, deletes the contents of the spool\printers folder within the Windows system folder, and restarts the spooler service.
Stop Automatic Updates
Stops the "Automatic Updates" service thereby preventing any software updates to be installed from Microsoft whilst you are diagnosing PC problems.
Start Automatic Updates
Starts the "Automatic Updates" service so necessary updates from Microsoft can be downloaded and installed.
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Great find! I'm often on the road and usually have fast internet access to get to a selection of this utilities when I need them. But! Now I'll have them all together, including some new ones that I had not know about before. Awesome find!
This is really good and helpful. Thanks a lot for the info.
nice! where can i get 1?
Uh, did you read the first sentence lagoona? The one with the link? There's also a big graphic at the top of the article with the URL. They have 5 mirrors on the page. Just scroll down a bit mate.
As a computer tech support I've had a flash drive with all of these, plus all the NirSoft tools, AVG, Avira and a few of the MS Tools and convertors. I use them all with the Portable Apps suite. With the size and price of flash drives you can also carry all of the Sysinternal tools.
Too bad when you click on the link for the shared file (Sharebee.com) that it takes you to a load of popups and scams. Not worth the hassle.
Or you could just use Ubuntu Gnu/Linux from a usb drive.
One of these mirrors took me to a page that had "Exploit MDAC ActiveX code execution (type 290)." Sorry I don't remember which.
Beware.
A few utils are not really needed for repairing a pc but still fun to play with :)
Dead Pixel Tester is adware and it only shows you dead pixels which changes are if you have any you have already noticed.
A better option would be UDPixel http://udpix.free.fr/
It's freeware shows dead pixel like Dead Pixel Tester but it also has an option to try and unstuck the dead pixel that I have had success with.
When I finally got through the delayed downloads in the sites soliciting paid membership of accelerated download, the README.TXT file in the ZIP starts with "If you dont know what you are doing, dont use it." These are all helpful files but should not be used without first RTFM where there is a helpfile.
(my bold italics)
As a computer tech who works almost everyday with home PC users and their problems, this toolkit is awesome. I had my own on my flash pen and i had 24 of your tools! but this collection sure is nice and I see the value in every one of them.
Might I sugest adding Open Office or a link to the Download to it, It is free open source office suite which is compatible with all microsoft formats. .doc, .xls, .ppt, and can read, edit, and save it MS formats. Also Avira Free Edition antivirus, plus I have more of the sysinternals tools such as page file defrager. I also have a panda removal tool if you would like it, its hard to get Had to talk to panda support to get the file.
Also Winsock repair utility, trend tool command line scanner, batch files that clear all temp files and prefetch clearing scripts. any thing u might like email me at deerhammer@msn.com
Hi,
Thanks for such a nice collection (rather pointer to). However, I'm not sure if other users have also noticed the following. I downloaded this file from two sources (mediafire and zshare) and passed through bitdefender (BD). In both the packs BD found a virus (trojan.generic.1352485) and notified the repacking of the archive after deleting it.
Anyone else with this experience. Whether it is a false positive or true one. Too bad if latter is the case.
Add in Glary Utilities with a good collection of features to clean up a messy PC. Registry cleaner, startup manager, context menu manager, registry defrag, file undelete + more.
All the downloads have virus-trojans in ComboFix.exe and SmitfraudFix.exe.
The only issue we had running these was with ProduKey.exe, which Symantec would prevent the file from being copied to disk, with Symantec determining it to be a security risk.
Going to Symantec's website shows no specific details on the risk posed - See http://securityresponse.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2007-120623-4720-99.
I would hate to think that Symantec have included this application within its virus list to appease Microsoft who want to hide product key information once products are installed.
I successfully ran ProduKey.exe on a Windows 7 box which has no anti-virus software installed and it displayed the Windows 7 and Office 2007 product keys I used during installation.
I monitored the application using SysInternal's Process Monitor application, and all it does is retrieve the ProductID and DigitalProductID registry values for the various products it knows about.
Not much of a security threat to me, but obviously a security risk to Microsoft.
That's nothing. I used to be a homeless rodeo clown but now I am a world class magician !
Thank you very much for your article. This is really good and helpful.
Don't be new.. the two .exe's are not virii.
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=169442
Unzipped it's over 5,000 files and takes hours to copy on a USB drive. Is this realistic, or am I copying junk?
It may not be the best portable suit. But it is very handy. Do any body know the proper way to update the individual software and make it still portable?
Once you have it setup on a usb drive you don't have to do that again do it's not a waste of time. Of course you won't need to use all the programs at once. It's just handy to have them available in the event something does go wrong and you don't have them readily available.
Thanks for the comments :)
Just wanted to point out that prior to publishing this post, we downloaded the kit and ran all of the associated software. But for ProduKey, which was disabled by Norton (as pointed out by Martyn above), the kit had no problems.
However, to ensure it wasn’t a threat, we ran ProduKey on a machine without anti virus software and found it to work fine - that is, do the job it is meant to without harming your machine.
Nice comprehensive list to repair the PC as well as keep the PC functioning well.
Thanks to share !!!
All for WINBUGS???
Puajjj.... :P
I am a member at that site the utility is a good there is one or 2 false positives for virus in the kit. The issue with the ads and junk for downloading I can't say much about you may want to hop over to the site for the original download and link as well it gets updated occasionaly.
Well I can't find the original link anymore but some of those mirror links should be good I know some are loaded with garbage.
Good post. Ill keep this site for reference
Matt
www.dayteks.com
Thanks. About time something like this was made available for free. Downloading...
Nice.
when i start the program "ccleaner" in the suit, it told me that there is a new version and directed me to ccleaner's website. However, I don't know how to install the new ccleaner as a portable program.
Clicked on the link in your article. technibble says:
The Computer Repair Utility Kit is no longer being distributed. However, we may be re-releasing it soon after some changes.
This is actually a nice little kit to get hold of. Saves you the time downloading each one of these free programs individualy. They are all very handy too.
I like puppies. They have cool smelling breath. Unicorns are also neat. But my favorite animal is a liger, but I bet they have bad breath.
The virustotal.com report for SmitFraudFix.exe shows 11 of 39 anti-virus apps thinks it may be dangerous.
ComboFix.exe shows 15 of 39 apps thinks it's dangerous.
I know that these virus removal apps may have to do some special things that may seem "virus-like", but I really have no idea if these cures are worse than the virus....
when i start the program "ccleaner" in the suit, it told me that there is a new version and directed me to ccleaner's website. However, I don't know how to install the new ccleaner as a portable program..
That's nothing. I used to be a homeless rodeo clown but now I am a world class magician !!
This is actually a nice little kit to get hold of. Saves you the time downloading each one of these free programs individualy. They are all very handy too.
I would like to see something similar for the Mac side of computing--this is a great idea and flash drives are really cheap these days!
--------
Free iPhone Webapps
http://www.webappgalaxy.com
I like puppies. They have cool smelling breath. Unicorns are also neat. But my favorite animal is a liger, but I bet they have bad breath..
CeBIT leidet unter der Krise - von raivo pommer
Eesti-raimo1@hot.ee
- Die Zeichen der Krise sind allgegenwärtig. Auch die CeBIT in Hannover als größte Computermesse der Welt bleibt in diesem Jahr von der globalen Wirtschaftsflaute nicht verschont.
Bereits vor einigen Jahren hatte - auch bedingt durch den wachsenden Wettbewerb mit anderen großen Messen - ein langsamer Ausstellerschwund eingesetzt. In diesem Jahr spitzte sich die Lage allerdings dramatisch zu. Insgesamt wird die Zahl der Aussteller um 25 Prozent einbrechen, lauten die jüngsten Schätzungen der Deutschen Messe AG. Die Ausrichter hoffen nun, für die Branche ein Signal des Aufbruchs zu setzen und Wege aus der Krise aufzeigen zu können.
Angesichts der Weltwirtschaftskrise seien auch 4300 Aussteller immerhin ein noch Erfolg, heißt es aus Hannover. Das Gros der Aussteller, die der Messe in diesem Jahr fernbleiben, seien vor allem kleinere Hersteller aus Asien. Die wichtigsten großen Unternehmen würden aber wieder nach Hannover kommen. Allerdings bleiben der Messe in diesem Jahr tatsächlich auch Schwergewichte wie Samsung oder Toshiba fern. Zugleich wollen die CeBIT-Macher unter dem Stichwort "Webciety" (Kunstwort aus "Web" und "Society") auch kleine und größere Unternehmen aus der Internet-Branche anlocken, die bislang nicht zu den traditionellen Ausstellern zählen.
"Die Hightech-Industrie steht im Vergleich zu vielen anderen Branchen noch recht gut da", sagt Bernhard Rohleder, Hauptgeschäftsführer des Branchenverbands BITKOM. Der Informationstechnologie- und Kommunikationsbranche komme bei der Bewältigung der Krise derzeit auch eine Schlüsselrolle zu. Viele kleine und große Unternehmen investieren gerade jetzt in neue IT- Systeme, um Kosten zu senken und in der angespannten Geschäftssituation weiter konkurrenzfähig zu bleiben.
Alas. The kit is no more.
"The Computer Repair Utility Kit is no longer being distributed. Some of the applications, while freeware, wanted the only download location of their software to be at the makers sites and I respect that. However, we may be re-releasing it soon after some changes.
If you like, you can create your own from our list of repair tools updated weekly."
If you want to go to a good computer repair company, I always suggest you to go to Geeks mobile, because they listens your problems and solves quickly. They always give quick services. This is a great computer support company.
It's a nice summary tools page for me.
Thanks for the post.
Unzipped it's over 5,000 files and takes hours to copy on a USB drive. Is this realistic, or am I copying junk??
With the advances in technology and conenciton speeds remote managment is by far the eaisest way to do comptuer repair, unless of course there is a physical problem with the computer.
Don't use a flash drive in a PC that you suspect has a virus. You may infect your flash drive without knowing it. Even if you plug a flash drive into a machine with an anti-virus, you can still infect the machine. All thanks to M$ and Autorun.
If you need all of these tools to help with your computer do you not think there must be a big problem with computers in the first place? Why can the computer manufacturers build tools into the computers that can do these jobs.
Really a lot of interesting tools. Thank you.
down load anti virus
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