Microsoft’s Fix it Center is a beta troubleshooting program that tweaks common Windows issues—sort of like previously mentioned FixWin—but it comes straight from Microsoft. It’s average-Joe friendly, and addresses everything from network glitches to media player issues.

Read More About It On Lifehacker

Have you had to clean up your music collection lately?

If you have, you have probably noticed that Itunes does a horrible job of updating your library. By horrible, I mean that it doesn’t do it at all. You have to re add the music folder to your library and then it takes forever to update.

Enter Itunes Library Updater.

This program will fix up your library with lightning fast speed and it does a great job of removing orphaned entries as well as adding new ones.

You can find at http://goo.gl/1ACh

Recently we had a case where we could not retrieve our customers music from their back up.  With the feeling that all hope was lost, she pointed out that all of her songs were on her Ipod and she was wondering if we can just take them off of there. Having done this in the past, I knew that it was possible but in the past it was really hard to do and I wanted a program that could make this a little less painful.

The program that we found and have come to love is called Iphone Explorer.

With Iphone Explorer we were able to find the music folder and transfer it back to the computer. One thing to understand is that the files have no meaningful name and neither do the folders. But if you import them into Itunes and make sure that you have enabled the option to let Itunes manage your library, they will all get their names and folders back. This is also only one use case, you can use this to store files on your ipod/iphone that you could not before as well.

You can find Iphone Explorer at http://www.iphone-explorer.com/

Antivirus programs can be as hard to remove and actual viruses. That is why a few of our 100 programs and websites are antivirus removal tools.

AVG is a popular free antivirus but when you need to upgrade to a better antivirus you want to be sure that AVG is completely removed.

The best thing to do is to run the AVG Removal Tool, this program will make sure all traces of AVG are gone from your system. You can then install your next antivirus without any worry of AVG interfering.

You can find the AVG Removal Tool at http://www.avg.com/download-tools

Audacity is a great free audio editing program.

From their website (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/)

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more! See the complete list of features.

You can get Audacity here http://bit.ly/audacity1

Have you ever downloaded a compressed file and you did not have the program to decompress it?

7-Zip aims to take care of that problem for you.

From the 7-Zip website:(http://www.7-zip.org/)

• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
• Supported formats:
  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format
• Integration with Windows Shell
• Powerful File Manager
• Powerful command line version
• Plugin for FAR Manager
• Localizations for 74 languages

7-Zip can decompress a multitude of zipped(compressed) file formats, it also has a pretty good compression engine for the times when you need to compress a file or a folder.

You can find 7-Zip at http://www.7-zip.org/

Cd Burner Xp is a great lightweight cd authoring program. This program can do most if not all of the functions of Nero and other commercial Cd Burning programs. It installs in under a minute and can make audio and data cds as well as burn images and copy discs.

Here is a list of features from their website (http://cdburnerxp.se/en/features)

Create Data-CDs/DVDs
* burn any Data on CD-R/CD-RW/DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM/BD/HD-DVD, including double layer mediums
* burn mp3-CDs to store many audio files on one single disc
* create bootable discs
* verify written Data automatically after burning process
* use either the internal browser to add your files or the intuitive Drop-Box to drag and drop files directly from any Windows Explorer window
* save your compilations for creation of backups
* burn on-the-fly and with buffer-underrun protections
* import previous (ISO 9660) sessions and edit existing file structure on CD/DVD
* quick- and full-erase disc
* copy data discs (possible copy-protection is not bypassed)
* retrieve recorder and disc information

Create Audio-CDs

* create Audio-CDs from mp3, wav, ogg, flac and wma files
* add single or multiple tracks from existing audio-CDs directly to your new compilation without ripping tracks before (add cda-files)
* play audio-files with integrated audio player
* gapless audio-CDs supported (disc-at-once-mode)
* import M3U or WPL playlists
* support for ReplayGain
* import CUE sheets
* create mixed-mode discs

ISO features

* burn ISO files to CD
* create your own ISO files
* convert bin- and nrg-files to ISO
* save CDs/DVDs as ISO file to disc

Other features

* simple cover printing feature for data- and audio-discs
* LightScribe integration
* Command line version
* supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives
* integrated option to enable access to drive for restricted users
* multi-language interface
* online update

If you are in need of a full featured cd buring program you can get Cd Burner XP here http://cdburnerxp.se

You have heard of Microsoft Office but have you heard about Open Office?

You have heard about Photoshop but have you heard about Gimp?

This post is dedicated to open source or free alternative software for programs that many of us want or need but cant afford to buy.

You can pretty much count on the fact that any program you want can be found in an open source or free version. The open source or free version may not be as good as the commercial item but it may do what you need it to. Open source means that the programming code is open for all to see and edit.

One of the things that I like to do is to check for an open source or free alternative to all software titles that I want or need. Once I find the best open source or free option, I try out the software and if it works, I just saved some money.  If not I guess I have to break out my wallet.

To get you started on your open source and free adventures I have compiled a small list of open source and free alternatives to some very expensive commercial software.

• Dia is like Microsoft Visio. It is used for charting and diagrams.
• Open Office is very similar Microsoft Office but its free.
• Gimp is a powerfull image editor the likes of Photoshop.
• CdBurnerXP is a great Cd burning software like nero.
• Audacity is a really good audio editing tool and can replace Avid for some people
• Firefox is an open source web browser to replace your free but very closed source Internet Explorer.
• Thunderbird is an open source email program that is just as good as Outlook for most people.
• TightVNC is an open source remote desktop tool that can replace Go To My PC.

This should get you started, as I come across more items I will add them to the list.

If you really want to go Open Source, don’t forget about Linux. I have found Ubuntu to be very easy to install and use and is a very viable Windows replacement.

Post your favorite open source and free programs  in the comments.

When you get infected with spyware, often times you need more than one program to help get rid of the infection.  We told you about Malwarebytes in an earlier post. Malwarebtes is on of our favorite program and does a great job of cleaning malware, but on badly infected machines we need to bring in Super Antispyware.

Super Antispyware is great for removing items that the other programs leave behind.  Super Antispyware has a free version and a pro version. The free version runs on demand and the pro one runs in the background.  Super Antispyware also has a free online scan that will tell you if you are infected or not.

We recommend that you download and install this program and run it as a part of your weekly scan.

Links:
Online Scan
SuperAntispyware.com

photo credit: Paperghost

How many browsers do you have?

One is not enough, you want to have a backup at all times. Internet Explorer can fail at anytime leaving you without a browser.

Before this happens, head over to http://www.google.com/pack and download and install Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.