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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Device Remover is like Device Manager on double steroids


Double steroids? Really? Yes, really. If we're going to call Device Remover a "Device Manager alternative," the double is totally necessary.

This is no sissy-boy device tree. Five tabs present you with a tree view, list view, drivers and services, list of drivers in memory, and active system processes and handles. You can also export or print a full list of your devices and search for a specific device or driver.

On the Device Remover tools menu, you'll find quick links to your control panel applets, relevant registry hives, shutdown options, system restore functions, MMC snap-ins, and macro that automatically removes all your data from every one of Google's web apps. Ok, the last one not so much. But there's a hell of a lot packed into that menu.

It's also good at backing up drivers and cleanup duties, and it's available as a portable app (though the .NET framework must be installed).

Pictures do this app more justice than words, so have a look at the author's screenshot gallery on Live.com. Device Remover works on Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Driver Backup! 2 is a free, portable DriverMax alternative


I've been using DriverMax for a while, and it's a great tool - I included it in my 5 applications for a painless Windows reformat. One thing I don't like about it is that it's not portable and that the screens don't display properly on computers running at 800x600 or 640x480.

Driver Backup! 2 is a nice alternative. While it doesn't have DriverMax's extra features (like driver updating), the just-under-1mb application provides fast, simple driver file backups and restorations.

Two other features I enjoy are that it's fully portable and supports command line switches for fully automatic operations. Even better, there's an integrated builder that will help you create your command line easily - as long as you can read a little Italian.

English help files are provided, though, and fully document the available switches. Setting one up manually is easy enough that you don't really need the builder's help anyway.

Both backups and restores are quick and painless, and it had no trouble with my Windows Vista x64 install. It's well worth adding to your USB flash drive.

Filed under: Windows, Freeware

Portable PC Wizard Analyzes, Benchmarks, Slices, & Dices

PC Wizard
We love kick-ass programs that run from our flash drives and don't take up a ton of space - especially when they come at us with a truckload of useful features.

CPUID's PC Wizard is a portable system analysis and benchmarking with tricks to spare. Apart from offering an incredible amount of information about the hardware and software in your computer (file associations, driver versions, hardware revisions, system uptime, etc.), it'll benchmark it, monitor sensors and voltages, and even stress-test it.

Benchmarking functions are surprisingly rich, testing everything from cpu, ram, drives, and even DirectX and MP3 performance. You won't get a huge assortment of systems to compare with, but you will get a good idea of how your rigs stacks up to some common configs.

We've had trouble with some portable system information apps missing the mark - especially on laptops - but PC Wizard worked like a charm, providing a ton of information about our test rig's proprietary mainboard. For an encore, PC Wizard can even figure out and display many MS application passwords and list them on the configuration screen. It's one more unexpected bonus feature that makes this program worth keeping on your flash drive.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

All in one driver solution with DriverMax


Need to reinstall Windows but you misplaced your driver disks? Not sure you have everything you need? DriverMax has you covered. Backing up and reinstalling your drivers couldn't be easier.

After installing DriverMax, go into Driver Operations and click on Export drivers. A list of all your installed drivers will be displayed and you can pick and choose which ones to export, or simply export the whole lot in one go. Once you've reinstalled Windows, go back into Driver Operations, click on Import drivers, and point to the folder containing your saved drivers. The import can take a while, but in comparison to manually installing each driver individually, this is a walk in the park.

DriverMax is also useful even if you don't need to perform a complete reinstall - you can use the program just to make sure that your drivers are up to date or export a list of your installed drivers as an html or text file.

DriverMax is compatible with Windows 2003, XP and Vista and you have to supply your email address in order to receive a registration code.

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft

29% of Windows Vista crashes caused by NVIDIA drivers

Vista crash chart

If you were an early adopter of Windows Vista, there's a pretty good chance you became familiar with one of Vista's coolest new features: an automatic crash reporting utility that will recommend solutions if and when they become available. Or to put it another way, if you tried running Windows Vista on many machines, there was a good chance your computer crashed. A lot. Even if the manufacturer had slapped a shiny new label proclaiming the computer to be "Vista Capable."

There's a class action suit working its way through the courts to determine whether Microsoft changed the definition of "capable" to help Intel sell computers chips. But some of the documents released in the case (PDF link) are interesting in their own right. For example, Microsoft has a chart that lists identified causes of Windows Vista crashes during an unspecified period in 2007.

The folks at Ars Technica took it upon themselves to convert that data into the pretty chart you see above. The number one culprit graphics chip maker NVIDIA, a company that had a difficult time updating its graphics drivers for the new operating system. Next up is Microsoft itself, and really there's no good excuse for that, is there?

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

DriverView: Super quick list of all the drivers installed on your PC

DriverView
Figuring out if your PC's drivers are all up to date can be a bit of a hassle. You could go into the Windows Device Manager, find the appropriate hardware, select update driver and see if anything new comes up. But it would take forever to do this for every single driver you might want to update.

On the other hand, you could run DriverView, a lightweight executable file that quickly scans your PC and returns a list of every driver and its version number. You can double-click on any driver to bring up more detailed information, save the entire list as a text file, or use the search option to find a specific driver.

DriverView won't download updated drivers for you, but if you want to quickly find out drivers are installed on your computer, this is probably the fastest way. Then you can visit the website for your hardware or software to see if there's a new version of your drivers available.

[via The How-To Geek]

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Utilities, Linux, Web services

Find out if Linux supports your wireless card

linux wireless searchI know, you rock the Linux and love it, but when you go to CompUSA (horror), it's nigh impossible to tell if the dazzling array of wireless doodads will rock your laptop... Gotta love that driver conundrum, huh? Well search no more. Actually, search more, since there's now a sort of centralized search tool for finding out what wireless cards are compatible with Linux. To say it's exhaustive is to belittle the effort that went into this. It's incredibly thorough. Products are listed by manufacturer, then WLAN type, then product ID, and so on. There are links (when available) to the appropriate drivers, because I can count on one hand the number of manufacturers that ship Linux drivers with their cards. So shop with confidence, and stay away from my unencrypted home network.

[Via digg]

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