WinRAP is a nice little freeware tool that allows you to hide applications from view on your desktop while letting them to continue running invisibly in the background. There are a few cases where such a tool may prove to be useful. The first thing that probably comes to mind is the hiding of programs that are unrelated to your work from your boss and colleagues. However, there are other uses that could also make this utility valuable for your work.

For instance, if you have started an admin tool on a user’s desktop and want to leave the place for a while. You can then let the tool finish its work while the user continues working with the computer. This way, you don’t have to worry that the user will interfere with your work. Another way to use the tool is to reduce the number of icons in your taskbar if it is cluttered with too many apps.

WinRAP is a tiny standalone tool which doesn’t have to be installed. It displays all running applications in the upper pane. You can hide each of the applications with a mouse click which moves the app’s name to the lower pane. The application’s interface will then disappear from the desktop. Of course, you can also unhide an application, if you want to access its interface.

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Submitted by Mobateam – Blog: Mobatek free software

This is post was updated by Olivier from Mobatek. The new features MobaXterm 2.2 can be found at the end of the article.

MobaXterm (formerly known as MobaXVT) is an enhanced terminal with an X server and a set of Unix commands (GNU/Cygwin) packaged in a single portable exe file.

MobaXterm includes a great multitab native Windows terminal, a new X server based on X.Org for easily export your Unix/Linux display and a lot of new GNU Unix commands. You can also use some of the free plugins for extending MobaXterm capabilities!

• The “split-mode” allows SysAdmins to monitor 4 servers at the same time
• The “save history” features allows them to easily keep some logs of their commands
• The ssh/telnet/rlogin/rsh/ftp/scp/sftp/rcp clients allow them to easily interact with remote Unix/Linux computers.

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Last week, you couldn’t hardly find an IT-related blog that didn’t announce this new free Sysinternals tool. Disk2vhd copies the contents of a physical disk to a virtual disk in Microsoft’s VHD format. Since Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, you can use the tool while the physical machine is online. In theory, it is possible to convert a physical system drive to a VHD.

The size of the standalone tool is only 670KB, so you shouldn’t expect wonders. I tried Disk2vhd on a Windows 7 system. I encountered my first problem with it when I had to decide which partition to convert. My boot and my system partition are separated. I selected them both and Disk2vhd packed them in one VHD file without complaining. The result was that neither Virtual PC 2007 SP1 nor the successor Windows Virtual PC was able to recognize the VHD. I didn’t try it with Hyper-V, but, I guess, the result would have been the same. Perhaps, it would have worked If I ran the tool twice to create two separate VHD files. But I didn’t explore this path because I have a 64-bit system and Virtual PC doesn’t support 64-bit guests.

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Shortly after I finished my series about the new Active Directory Recycle Bin feature in Windows Server 2008 R2, I stumbled across the Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack for PowerGUI. As I noted in my review, restoring Active Directory objects via PowerShell or the LDP.exe GUI is quite cumbersome. I recommended using Quest Object Restore for Active Directory or ADRestore.NET instead. But this PowerGUI PowerPack is an even better solution because it has some useful additional features to offer.

Since Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerPack is an add-on, you have to import it manually once you installed PowerGUI. This will add a new folder to the PowerGUI tool which lists all deleted AD objects. I like that it preserves the hierarchical structure of deleted objects. This is useful if you deleted an organizational unit that contained other objects.

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Submitted by Howard Jares

Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Feature list:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmark
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback

Notepad++

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Submitted by Peder Vendelbo Mikkelsen

NetworkMiner is a free tool to collect information about hosts “speaking” to the network.

From the publisher:

NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) for Windows. NetworkMiner can be used as a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool in order to detect operating systems, sessions, hostnames, open ports etc. without putting any traffic on the network. NetworkMiner can also parse PCAP files for off-line analysis and to regenerate/reassemble transmitted files and certificates from PCAP files.

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The Windows Explorer is a comfortable tool with which to manage your files. Although it lacks some features, most users would rather live without those features than install a third-party file manager. One way to improve the functionality of Windows Explorer is to enhance the context menu. This has already been achieved by many applications, but Microsoft has yet to come up with an easy way for the average user.

The program FileMenu Tools fills this gap. It creates a new item in the Context Menu of Explorer and opens up various possibilities for customizing it. If you choose the item FileMenu Tools Configuration in the Context Menu of the tool, a GUI will pop up where you can comfortably make your personal adjustments.

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Submitted by Howard Jares

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 a 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).

KeePass

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Submitted by HealthMan

• Keep an eye on nearly every aspect of your system with 60 different checks for system and network (connectivity, database, e-mail, performance, SQL Server, Exchange, and others).
• Decide how you will be alerted about problems and what actions should be taken (send e-mail, sms, open a ticket, launch a script).
• Define suspend/shutdown intervals for your workstations and have HealthMonitor turn them off when they are not used
• Track power savings over time and increase your system energy efficiency

HealthMonitor

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It appears that I’ve never reviewed an undelete tool on 4sysops. I will make up for this omission today. Piriform’s Recuva is a free and easy-to-use file recovery utility. It has to be installed, but if you then copy its executable (Recuva.exe) from its Program Folder to another computer, it will work there without problems. It therefore qualifies as a standalone tool. I think, every admin needs such a tool on a USB stick. How often does it happen that a user tells you an extremely important document has disappeared in mysterious ways and can’t even be found in the Windows Recycle Bin?

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Product Key Finder is a very simple tool that allows you to retrieve product keys from a Windows computer. Its publisher claims that it supports more than 200 Windows applications. The tool displays the licenses keys it retrieves from the registry in a small window, but it can also be launched on the command line. Thus, you can use it in scripts. Furthermore, it is possible to remotely retrieve license keys with Product Key Finder.

The tool only supports two command switches: /CSV and /remote. “/CSV” will create a text file in the CSV format. The file name is just the computer name with the extension .txt. You can use multiple computer names with the /remote switch. Product Key Finder will then create multiple CSV files.

It appears that Product Key Finder has problems with Vista x64. It failed to retrieve the Microsoft Office 2007 product key on my test machine. In contrast, it had no problem exporting the Office license key on Vista x86. I tested Product Key Finder 2.0.9

Product Key Finder

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A while back, I reviewed SpeedFan, which is a nice CPU temperature monitoring tool. Real Temp is a similar utility, but it is more focused on measuring processor temperature than SpeedFan, which has quite a few other functions. I somehow like Real Temp better, although I miss a hard disk temperature monitoring feature.

Real Temp is a standalone tool that is useful if you want to measure the CPU temperature on a server quickly because you don’t have to install the program. Real Temp can display the temperatures of all CPU cores and the GPU (graphics processing unit) separately in the systray. This can be useful if you have to stress your CPU for some time, and want to stay informed about the temperatures at all times.

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Submitted by Edward Lansink – Blog: GFI Tech blog

GFI WebMonitor Freeware is a freeware web filtering and web security solution for ISA Server, ideal for SMBs. It lets administrators monitor what websites users are currently browsing and what files are being downloaded in real-time. Through user and site bandwidth monitoring features, the administrator has the ability to track download and upload traffic and the number of URL hits over time.

GFI WebMonitor Freeware

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Every once in a while you need to repartition your hard drive; the tools shipped with Windows are sufficient for most of these occasions. Sometimes, however, even Diskpart lacks important features — especially if you have to deal with mixed partition types. Moreover, although there is specialized software for Windows, it is usually not free.

There are various partition tools for Linux. One of these is GParted. If you think that GParted is only capable of dealing with Linux file systems, you may be surprised to read that every option that it offers is also available for NTFS. GParted can detect, read, create, grow, shrink, move, copy, check and label almost every file system. The screenshot below gives you an overview of all supported file systems and functions.

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It’s summertime in the northern hemisphere, and the high outdoor temperatures can make your computers sweat as well. SpeedFan is a free tool that allows you to monitor the temperature of various hardware components and take measures if certain limits are reached. The latter feature is also useful for servers.

SpeedFan monitors the temperature of processor cores, GPUs (Graphical Processing Units), and hard disks. It can also measure motherboard voltages and the speed (in RPM) of your CPU fan, chassis fan, and power fan.

Measuring the voltages and fan speed didn’t work on my Dell laptop using Vista x64, even though, SpeedFan officially supports 64-bit systems with signed drivers. Monitoring the hard disk temperature only worked after I started the tool as administrator.

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