Useful tools for computer repair
What to do when disaster strikes your machine on deadline day
- Published: 27/01/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
One year and nine days after my wonderful Sugar Daddy let me pick a beautiful new computer to use at home, the hard drive went even further south than Betong.
At an astounding 84KB to download, you won’t find a smaller, faster or more compact benchmarking program than Qwikmark.
It's not a record. My very first unbelievably huge, 40MB hard drive - big enough to hold everything, for the rest of my life and which cost a mere 27,000 baht - that drive, also with a one-year warranty, collapsed on its 366th day in my possession. The vendor almost kept a straight face as he offered to sell me a replacement, but the warranty was out.
The latest drive failure caught me on the back foot, literally halfway through my column, and it was catastrophic. By that, I mean, the drive died and spewed, and shut down my operation, right on deadline.
That is the reason I wasn't around last week. That is the reason I missed not one but two ladies' nights in a row, delving into places no self-respecting dancer would be photographed. And that is the reason we'll be discussing two subjects in coming weeks: The best programs to put on a brand, spanking new Windows computer, and the latest, greatest, almost instant, backup tools.
Today, something related - finding, testing and replacing some of the small, one-purpose and simple utilities. Around the lavishly garish, yet always somehow calming Database suites high above the Mother of Rivers, we call these "sharp-edged tools," a name first dreamed up and often used by the master author of dozens of such utilities, the late Database contributor John "The Maven" DeHaven.
In the course of updating some of the replacements, I found the always-inventive, never-resting corps of freeware authors have come up with some fine new tools, and I have been looking at many of them, keeping a few. Here is a short list of a few I liked a lot.
Because I had to start from scratch on a naked hard drive, one of the first tasks was to figure out how to do a lot of copying. The Copy command in DOS works well, and XXCopy is a fantastic utility. But I found something new that I have used a lot in the past couple of weeks.
With more features than you can show in one screenshot, ArtSee is a clever photo viewer or automated slideshow for a single Windows folder.
Mirror, I learned, is actually an older program that is perfect for this task. A mere 32KB to download, and portable (meaning no installation), it does one thing, beautifully. That is to synchronise two folders and all sub-folders. That means it copies all files from one drive to another, and then arranges them so the new setup is precisely the same as the old.
Since this is the very essence of restoring backed up material, Mirror proved an excellent tool in helping get me back to work.
Zeno Systems, the people who made the freeware version of Mirror are gone. The file can be downloaded directly from tinyurl.com/yz3wnu3.
When I'm working and not fixing a crashed computer, I tend to work a lot on photos and graphics, and I try to have them all in one specific folder for my convenience. So I took a good look at a program that promised to help me with this task.
Artsee is the work of generous Canadian music freaks, which isn't logical, but then why should it be? The program is a fabulous aid to seeing, sorting, editing and just generally working with graphics.
At its core, like many such programs, it is a thumbnail viewer. But it can set up slideshows, give you wallpapers, bring photos to the fore for better viewing, and a lot more.
It's certainly not for anyone by any means, but if you look at a lot of photos, you probably should take a look at this little beauty, at http://www.xworks.ca/artsee.
GlobalSpellChecker has long been on my list of attractive software for anyone who already has Microsoft Office installed. The program is small to download at just 87KB and converts the spell checker from Microsoft Word into an all-purpose feature.
That is, it allows you to use your Word spell checker anywhere, any time, for any program. Spell check in Notepad, in your email, in Wordpad. This is a super advantage, not just because you now have universal spell checking, but because you also have all your personal words you have added over the months or years.
The program is explained further and available for download at the website of Shafeek Mohammed of Kerala, India, at http://www.shaplus.com.
Finally, for now, is another program I have mentioned before, but which I had almost forgotten about.
Qwikmark once again proved to be a valuable tool as I made the rounds of hard-drive sellers to settle on a new C: drive. This tiny (84KB download) program is a benchmarker, meaning that you start it up and it gives you the specifics of the machine you are running on.
I wanted to know how each prospective drive would perform, and Qwikmark was a nice way to level the playing field, and let me know the sort of machines that the new drives were running on.
I doubt I ever again will go to the computer shops to buy a new PC without Qwikmark loaded on my USB drive. But even for this task of purchasing a replacement drive for a still excellent computer, Qwikmark was helpful.
Vista Software of Arizona state gives away Qwikmark and other sharp-edged tools. Click on "Support & Tools" at their website. Go to http://www.vtaskstudio.com.
As my life gets back to normal after this adventure with a broken PC, I'll be able to discuss rebuilding a faster, better stronger Windows solution.
Email:
wandasloan@gmail.comRelate Search: Qwikmark
About the author
- Writer: Wanda Sloan
- Position: Reporter
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