Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

maintenance posts

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Lists

6 free Windows programs to fix and prevent PC problems on your own

Yesterday I wrote up a little list of things I wished people would quit installing on their PCs. Today, I've put together a selection of handy programs those same people can use to take care of some of the annoyances I mentioned - and more.

Here are six (seventeen, really, but some are grouped) simple applications that will help - and they're all free for personal use!

1. PC Decrapifier - A lot of people that drop their systems off for repair say "take out any programs that don't need to be there." Well, that's exactly the kind of crud Decrapifier is designed to get rid of. It compares the programs on your system to a list of known bloatware (Wikipedia definition) and simplifies the removal process.

2. Malware Bytes - Those annoying popups you're getting? The weird pages you see when you try to search for something in your browser? Malware Bytes does a great job at removing the pests that cause those problems. It's usually the first program I run on horribly bogged-down computers. After a scan, clean, and reboot, they're usually much more cooperative.

3. Glary Utilities - The one-click maintenance mode in Glary is a wonderfully simple way for even non-technical users to keep their systems tuned. It tackles all kinds of tasks, from removing temporary file garbage and broken shortcuts to tuning up your registry.

One note: download the slim version to avoid the Ask Toolbar. You can opt out of it during the regular install, but slim removes it altogether.

Read more →

Filed under: Features, Windows, Open Source, Lists, Windows x64

40+ great open source apps & games to trick out your new Windows install

This weekend I finished setting up a fresh triple-boot install on my MSI laptop. With my operating systems ready to go, the time had come to start reinstalling applications. While it wasn't a conscious decision, I noticed that the majority of my apps were Open Source - so I decided to keep the ball rolling.

Even if you haven't just gone through a reformat, these are great applications and well worth installing. If you have, then hopefully this list will provide you with a solid base of programs to get you started with your fresh, new Windows install!

Web Browsers: Chromium, Firefox
They excel at different things, so I install both browsers by default. Chromium is great for all-purpose surfing, while I use Firefox and my favorite extensions to tackle my daily web-based work.

Office: OpenOffice.Org, Sumatra, PDFCreator
For lightweight PDF reading and creation from any Windows app, Sumatra and PDFCreator are solid options. OpenOffice.Org, well, it's the name to beat in open source suites.

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Security, Windows, Freeware, Browsers, Windows x64

CCleaner adds another C: Chrome cleanup


CCleaner has long been a favorite app of our readers, and its developers continue adding improvements to the already great program.

One big addition in the current build is support for Google Chrome, which rounds out CCleaner's ability to tidy up after the five major Windows web browsers (IE, Firefox, Crome, Opera, and Safari). CCleaner has actually been sweeping up after Chrome since December, but since it appears on the applications tab you may not have noticed it there.

If you're the forgetful type (or just don't want to be hassled by the toolbar install option), download the portable or toolbar-free version from the other builds page. It's a great tune-up and clean-up tool, and a must have for your USB flash drive.

[ via Download.com ]

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware

MainMenu: Automated maintenance for your Mac

MainMenu is a small utility for the Mac that contains a number of maintenance tools and system tweaks designed to keep your Mac running smooth as a baby's cheek.

With its small footprint and even smaller icon sitting in your menu bar, it's easy to sell MainMenu short. But this little program packs a lot of punch. MainMenu has one-click functionality for repairing permissions, rebuilding your Spotlight library, cleaning system, user, and browser caches, force emptying the trash, and more.

You can set up multiple tasks to run in a batch process, with the option to shut down or restart your computer after the maintenance tasks are completed.

MainMenu includes more advanced tasks as well, such as the ability to disable the dashboard, securely empty the trash, and clean archived logs. MainMenu supports Growl notifications as well.

If you've never been addicted to keeping your machine clean and running well, MainMenu is a good way to start the habit. MainMenu is a universal binary, totally free, and compatible with Leopard.

Filed under: Business, Google

Google Apps Calendar Maintenance

Google Apps Calendar MaintenanceCalling all Google Apps users, your schedule might not be spot-on this Thursday.

Users of Google Apps can expect some downtime during routine maintenance of the Google Calendar Thursday April 26th, from 8AM to 9PM. As is expected with any sort of maintenance, downtimes may and will occur and in this case Google Calendar might not be accessible for some time. Scheduled maintenance during daylight hours, what gives, Google?

This blow to users scheduling sure does make us wonder if Google Apps is worth using for our main scheduling application. It is understandable that system upgrades have to occur in order to improve services, it just sucks that we are now forced to suffer.

For Google Apps support you can check out http://www.google.com/support/a/

Drop a comment on Thursday to let us all know if you were affected by the maintenance and approx. how long your downtime lasted for.

UPDATE: More info on the scheduled maintenance from Google:

Why are we doing an upgrade?
We are updating some of our servers as we continue to improve Google Calendar. This is a normal maintenance update, and as with all updates we look to minimize the impact to our end users.

How will this impact my end users?
The impact to your users should be minimal. Only a subset of your users should be affected by the upgrade. These users may have trouble accessing their Google Calendars for a short period of time, generally less than 5-10 minutes each.

Will Google Calendar be down from 8AM to 9PM PDT?
No. This is the window of time that the maintenance upgrade will take place. During this time some users will experience issues accessing their calendar, but only for a short period of time each.

Filed under: Internet, News, Web services, Social Software

Digg down?

Digg downOne of our favorite sites (yours and mine) is down this morning. What does this mean for Digg? Crazy-cool new changes and upgraded features? Has Digg been hacked, or is this routine? "Out of service" doesn't look too good, but is this just web 2.0-speak for hold-on we're kicking-up the good stuff another notch? I don't remember Netscape going down to launch their video product site-wide, but perhaps this isn't a good comparison to make? Here's to hoping that this is nothing bad for Digg, and that it will be back online very soon. We miss you Digg, come back to us soon.

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Commercial

Microsoft announces OneCare official release

Microsoft Windows Live OneCare

After months of beta-testing, Microsoft has announced the official release of Windows Live OneCare, its Windows security and maintenance suite. OneCare includes anti-virus software, firewall, a backup utility, and spyware protection via Windows Defender, plus disk defragmentation, cleanup, and Windows Update features. OneCare is now available through the Windows Live web site and will cost you $49 per month year to protect up to three PCs.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio

Joystiq

TUAW

Daily Finance

Autoblog

Urlesque

Engadget

WoW

Switched.com

FanHouse