System Update Readiness Tool (CheckSur)

"System resources, such as file data, registry data, and even in-memory data, can develop inconsistencies during the lifetime of the operating system. These inconsistencies might be caused by various hardware failures or might be caused by software issues. In some cases, these inconsistencies can affect the Windows servicing store, and they can cause software updates not to work. The System Update Readiness Tool tries to resolve these inconsistencies."

For Vista, Server 2K8, and Windows 7.

This has been helpful in the past for failing installations of .NET and related patches. Takes quite a while to run.

OutlookTempCleaner

OutlookTempCleaner is a support tool for Microsoft Office Outlook. It gives you easy access to the Temp folder that Outlook uses to open attachments. It further allows you to automate maintenance to it via Windows's Scheduled Tasks.

Main Program Features

• Easy access to Outlook's SecureTempFolder used for opening attachments
• Determination of the current size of the folder
• Empty the folder
• Command line options to perform maintenance to the folder via for instance Scheduled Tasks and logon/logoff scripts

Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI)

"Used by millions of home users around the world, the Secunia PSI is a free security tool designed with the sole purpose of helping you secure your computer against vulnerabilities in programs."

Free for personal use. Both Microsoft and non-Microsoft software. Windows only.

Sumatra PDF

"Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows. Portable out of the box.

Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features.

It's small and starts up very fast.

It's designed for portable use: only one file so you can run it from external USB drive. Doesn't write to registry."

Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer

“The Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web based tool that's designed to help IT administrators to troubleshoot connectivity issues with their Exchange Server deployments. It allows administrators to test connectivity to their Exchange domains remotely from outside of their organizations internal networks. In order to use this tool, you must enter the credentials of a working account from the Exchange domain to be tested. To avoid the potential risk of working credentials being exploited and therefore compromising the security of your Exchange environment, we strongly recommend that you create a test account for the purpose of using this tool, and delete this account immediately after you have completed the connectivity testing.”

KeePass Password Safe

KeePass is a free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.

What is KeePass?
Today you need to remember many passwords. You need a password for the Windows network logon, your e-mail account, your homepage's FTP password, online passwords (like website member account), etc. etc. etc. The list is endless. Also, you should use different passwords for each account. Because if you use only one password everywhere and someone gets this password you have a problem... A serious problem. The thief would have access to your e-mail account, homepage, etc. Unimaginable.

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). For more information, see the features page.

Used and recommended by my friend Tony.

Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect is an image backup program. There is a free Edition (for personal use).

Absolutely free! No strings! The only free XP and Vista compatible disk imaging software with BartPE and Linux based recovery options.

• Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
• Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
• Built in scheduler.
• 32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
• Industry leading compression levels and speed.
• Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
• Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD DL media with Windows Vista.
• HTML log files.

Startup Delayer

Startup Delayer by r2 Studios purports to speed up windows boot-up time. Reviewed by PCWorld and highly rated.

From the r2 web site:

When Windows loads it's Startup file, it attempts to load every program in there at the same time. Therefore if you have quite a lot of programs starting when Windows starts, each program will try and grab CPU time so that it can load.

If each program tries to do this at the same time, you soon notice the slow down that occurs, due to your CPU trying to help all the programs to load, and your hard disk accessing multiple files.

Startup Delayer allows you to setup how many seconds after Windows has started, to load each program.

For Example:
If you have your mail program and a special clock starting up, then you can make your mail start say 10 seconds after Windows has loaded, and then the special clock start 20 seconds after Windows Starts.

Prezi

Prezi - an interesting-looking presentation tool. An interesting and creative PowerPoint alternative? Free, online version.

Balsamiq Mockups

Balsamiq Mockups is both a desktop application and online tool for designing user interface (UI) mockups. It sports a simple and powerful interface that makes for quick UI design and idea communication.

An even better option: iPlotz

R-Studio

"R-Studio is a family of powerful and cost-effective undelete and data recovery software. Empowered by the new unique data recovery technologies, it is the most comprehensive data recovery solution for recovery files from FAT12/16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 (created or updated by Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista), HFS/HFS+ (Macintosh), Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris) and Ext2FS/Ext3FS (Linux) partitions. It functions on local and network disks, even if such partitions are formatted, damaged or deleted. Flexible parameter settings give you absolute control over data recovery."

AutoPatcher

This utility purports to streamline the initial patching process for a fresh Windows OS install. You download a whole mess of things and burn them to a CD, then answer some questions and the process is supposed to be fairly automated. I haven't tried it yet but if using a slower internet connection or doing multiple machines this could help a ton.

CCCP

The CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) is a DirectShow filter pack.

DiskDigger

DiskDigger is "an all-in-one undelete and recover utility that’s simple, straightforward, easy to use, and most importantly, free!"

DiskDigger can recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

DiskDigger is also very compact and portable. The entire program is a single executable file that you can run from anywhere. There’s nothing to “install,” and the program doesn’t leave any trace of having been run.

EveryDNS.net

EveryDNS.net provides free DNS services.

static DNS services as well as many advanced services such as Dynamic DNS
resolution, Secondary service, AXFR service, and domain2web redirection

DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML is an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives.

This free (for home users) application performs the same task as Ghost; it creates exact hard drive images for archiving or migration.

InfraRecorder

InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

RichCopy

My friend Ron introduced me to a free utility from Microsoft called RichCopy via a TechNet article. It is described as "An advanced alternative to RoboCopy".

From the TechNet article:

RichCopy is a free utility that comes to us from Ken Tamaru of Microsoft. The tool was first developed in 2001 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with evolving needs. Trust me when I tell you, this is the answer to all your file copying needs. What you'll find most striking the first time you take RichCopy out for a spin is that it's a multithreaded copying tool. That means that rather than copying one file at a time in serial order, RichCopy can open multiple threads simultaneously, allowing many files to be copied in parallel and cutting the total time required to complete the operation several times over. You can also pause and resume file copy operations, so if you lose network connectivity at any point, you can just pick up where you left off.

According to this blog post I found, it is blisteringly fast.

15 free downloads to pep up your old PC

"Got an aging Windows laptop or desktop computer, but money's too tight to buy a new one? Fret not. There's plenty of life in your old PC. It may seem sluggish and on the point of expiring, and its hard disk may be nearly full to bursting, but there's plenty you can do to clean it up, speed it up and give it new life."

Link

Hard Drive Cloning Utility

http://clonezilla.org/

Open Source alternative to clone utilities such as Norton Ghost, Partition Image, etc.

Drive imaging program, bare metal backup and recovery.