MasterDex Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 I'm probably just as blind as a bat but I haven't seen any thread like this here on the forums (Sorry if I missed it) so I decided to start one up. Since many of here are PC gamers, I'm sure we've all had a problem and stumbled upon a great program or tool that helped us out. I'll begin by posting a few links to some things I always install when starting with a fresh OS. Cleaning up Ccleaner - Ccleaner is a must-have for anyone with a PC. It's a small program that cleans up temporary files that are cluttering up your computer quickly and easily, allows you to overwrite your newly freed up space (securely deleting all the evidence of PS3 hacks ), find problems in your registry and manage what starts up when you login. It also adds itself to the dropdown box of the recycling bin, keeping itself close at hand for when you need it. In short, it does the job of several different programs better than most and as good as you can ask for. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner NCleaner - "I always preferred NCleaner to CCleaner. More capable and lighter." ~Faiblesse Des Sens. http://www.nkprods.com/ncleaner/ Defraggler - From the creators of Ccleaner (Piriform), comes this great defrag tool. It's faster than the stock windows defrag tool, it can defrag single files and folders so you don't have to defrag the entire drive and it's very light on resources. A must-have replacement for the crappy windows defrag. http://www.piriform.com/defraggler Graphics Cards: ATI Tray Tools - Ever load up a game with an ATI card and watch your driver-set colour settings reset? Have problems getting those colour settings to stick? ATI Tray Tools is the only solution I've found and not from lack of trying. With ATI Tray Tools, you can create a colour profile and set it to a hotkey and activate it from in-game so you don't have to fiddle around with the in-game options hoping to match the colour settings you want. It's also got a bunch of other handy features but I have it just for the purpose I mentioned. http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-tray-tools-/ Media Players and Codecs CCCP - I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen people complain that they can't play this or that only for them to mention they have some crappy codec pack or several conflicting codec packs installed. Save yourself the hassle. Forget VLC, Forget K-Lite. Get CCCP, use Media Player Classic for all your video files and be content with no more codec problems....unless you go and install more codecs or something. http://www.cccp-project.net/ CoreAVC - "For those having problems playing HD Video use the Core AVC codec. It's spectacular in MPC." ~Faiblesse Des Sens. CoreAVC is currently the best codec out there for H.264 videos. It allows HD videos to run on hardware other codecs don't. The only catch is you'll have to buy it. If you've got a decent system, CCCP should be fine but if you need this, it's definitely worth getting. It's also compatible with CCCP so you shouldn't need to worry about any conflicts. http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc I'll leave it there for now, my mind is too tired to think of all of the things I had thought to add to this list at the moment but I'll update this thread after some sleep. Please feel free to make your own suggestions too and I'll add them to this post. One guideline I would suggest however is that the tools or programs are free or damn good if they're worth something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 I always preferred NCleaner to CCleaner. More capable and lighter. Also for those having problems playing HD Video use the Core AVC codec. It's spectacular in MPC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 Yeah Ccleaner I'd say is a must have tool. Defraggler not so much, I use Smart Defrag myself. Which it recently became version 2 with a better UI n such. However on Piriform they also have Speccy which is a pretty decent, gives a good look at the parts in your PC. If you've built your own then you normally know, but if you're wanting to upgrade and don't know what parts are in your PC it's a good tool. You can export it as a txt or xml file to then say...upload on here. 7-zip is another must have, especially as many things tend to come in zip,rar n 7z files. Dropbox is another handy tool. Back up saves, share files on twitter, here, IM etc. Also image posting (make sure to put images inside the Public folder if you're doing that though. And you can sign up via links like this: http://db.tt/GNLJbc0 to get a boost in space for you and the referrer. Live Writer is more a tool for the blog users. It works with Wordpress, Blogger and probably a few others in a wyswig editor. Niche but very good at it's task. Livestream Procaster is good for streaming games n such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterDex Posted March 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 I was going to add all the links to the first post to keep them together but you've done far too good of a job with your post that I'd feel bad doing that! 7-zip is one I thought of when I was first composing this thread, definitely a must-have. Edit: I don't know why but all my links got borked so I just added them to the end of their description. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuchikoma Posted August 28, 2011 Report Share Posted August 28, 2011 I like Scanner2 and WinDirStat for clearing up disk space. For personal use, I've been using Auslogics disk defrag and Easeus Todo Backup, though they'd cost money in a commercial environment. Personally, I've never trusted codec packs after every one I've tried left my system an unusable conflicted mess. I've heard CCCP is great, but these days I just install ffdshow and MPC-HC since I don't have to worry about people encoding videos in Cinepak, Indeo, VDO, ATI proprietary, and other strange codecs. It's even good for capture since it can handle HuffYUV, XviD and H.264, and the feature list on the decoder filter has spoiled me. I also like to put TrueCrypt on my own systems because I lightly (one pass, Twofish or AES) encrypt my external hard drives entirely just so I never have to worry about losing them etc. I also do this to hard disks I backup onto. I have a whole "toolbox" flashdrive full of stuff I used at work as a tech support analyst, so if anyone has a specific common task they need something for, I may have the tool for the job. I've especially appreciated things like the "Magic Jellybean Windows Key Finder" which will tell you the license key you'd have to enter to reinstall Windows on your PC. Also, you can get utilities that will crack most BIOS passwords within an hour based on numbers that flash up on screen when the PC boots that are actually a hash of the password! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harri Posted August 28, 2011 Report Share Posted August 28, 2011 Well this should be obvious, but I use audacity for recording my voice, just in case I want to rant and rave like a crazy old man. Works well with dropbox. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ I use youtube to mp3 converter for those songs, which may not be legal, but gets the job done. http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-YouTube-to-MP3-Converter.htm Hamachi is useful to provide a pseudo-lan service for your games. https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/download.aspx Sorry 'bout links Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna Go Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 · Hidden by Chris, October 28, 2011 - Advertising Hidden by Chris, October 28, 2011 - Advertising I like to use free sticky notes for desktop: http://sticky-notes.org/ multifunctional and very useful) Link to comment
deanb Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Just to expand a bit Focus Writer I've actually being using the Portable version. It's a text editor basically. Full screen, meant for "distraction free writing". You can theme it, so choosing new background colours( great to decrease eye strain), even an image. There's also an ability to add a word count aim, though I don't bother. Here is my Theme if you're interested. Pixelvision Not a program as such, but a great Steam theme. Makes the chat window pretty awesome, maximizes screen space and generally polishes the Steam UI up. It's easy to swap between Steam skins, so I strongly suggest giving it a go. Game Save Manager I wrote an article on this back in May. It's pretty handy, can either make a plain back-up, or back it up to the cloud via drop-box or an FTP. great if you're refreshing/upgrading PCs. It puts stuff back in the right path, it has an ever growing index (new games will need to take a while to get added, but you can submit the paths yourself.) It also has "Steam Spreader" which lets you move steam games from partition to partition. I don't bother with it, but it's good for you guys with SSDs I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterDex Posted December 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 I completely forgot I made this thread, lol. I must check out that Focus Writer, looks very nice. Notepad++ For those of you that find themselves tweaking games through .ini files, this is an invaluable tool. It's also a handy program for typing up code without the overhead that many of the development suites have. Granted, you can't compile the code with Notepad++ but it's handy nonetheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Notepad++ has been very handy. I've mainly used it when sorting stuff out for the site (tweaking CSS/PHP files etc), turns out it works great for .ini files for games too. Makes it very nicely laid out, collapsible Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted December 29, 2011 Report Share Posted December 29, 2011 Game Save Manager has really improved, I like it now. Dropbox functionality is exactly what it needed. Checking out that Steam theme. edit: having some issues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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