FreeUndelete

FreeUndelete

FreeUndelete restores deleted files, including those removed from Windows Recycle Bin. In case of accidental removal of files on a NTFS (1.0 and 2.0) (default for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and NT), FAT32, FAT16 or FAT12 file systems this is the utility to help.

Supported file systems:
NTFS 1.0, NTFS 2.0, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32

The recovered files are saved into a new user-selected location to prevent overwriting the deleted files on the original media.

 

Free For Personal Use!
It is our pleasure to emphasize that FreeUndelete is free for personal use. There is no charge, direct or hidden, to download and use a fully functional copy of the program. The program does not install any spyware or adware along with it. It does not populate user's desktop with pop-up ads or forcefully subscribe user to mailing lists.

Please note that purchase is mandatory for use in business environment. Registered business users get guaranteed customer support service. For private users customer support is not guaranteed and depends on support staff workload.

Order Business License

Proper Usage Techniques
A deleted file is essentially an area on disk designated as free and ready to accept data (such as contents of some other file). Luckily, unless the area has already been overwritten, it still holds the contents of the deleted file. Due to this fact it is possible to undelete files.

This fact also dictates the following procedure for using FreeUndelete:

Stop any activity on the disk you are going to undelete files from! Remember that writing to that disk can damage the contents of the deleted files. Examples of disastrous activity include: copying files to the disk, installing programs there or running programs that use the disk as their swap media.
Download and install FreeUndelete. Whenever possible, save the setup executable and install the program to a disk that does not hold files you need to undelete.
Run and use FreeUndelete.
Tip: It is common that the only drive user has is C: and this is also the drive from where files need to be undeleted. In that case a good solution is using a USB flash drive as FreeUndelete download and install destination.

Features
File systems supported: NTFS 1.0, NTFS 2.0, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
Operating systems supported: Windows XP, 2000, NT 4 (SP2 or higher required), Windows 2003 Server
Easy to use, no special user skills required
Full install/uninstall support
Limitations
Does not support Windows 98, Windows 98SE and Windows ME
System Requirements
Operating system: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 2003 Server or 2008 Server
RAM: 256-1024 MB
Hard Disk: minimum 10 MB of free space required for installation
Display: 640 x 480 or higher resolution, 256 colors

Comodo Internet Security

 Comodo Internet Security

 

 Want to Protect you PC?

Comodo Internet Security can satisfy all your needs

SECURE your PC: Firewall & Antivirus
EASY to use and config
FAST react to invasions
All-in-One Protection

BE AWARE! Only keep your PC free of Malware and Viruses is not enough! Get full protection with our Pro edition: 24/7 live support, $500 guarantee and more!

 

 Why Choose Comodo Internet Security?

Comodo Internet Security is the free, multi-layered security application that keeps hackers out and personal information in.

Built from the ground upwards with your security in mind, Internet Security offers 360° protection by combining powerful Antivirus protection, an enterprise class packet filtering firewall, advanced host intrusion prevention and automatic sandboxing of unknown files.

Unlike the stripped down versions of commercial software that other software vendors offer for free, this is the full, completely functional version of the product.

Users can upgrade to Comodo Internet Security Pro 2012 for just $4.99 per year and receive—GeekBuddy®—a 24 hour per day, unlimited incident support services package which retails at $49.95 per year. Try it FREE for 30 days!

The Secrets of Comodo Internet Security

Antivirus: Tracks down and destroy any existing malware hiding in a PC.
Anti-Spyware: Detects spyware threats and destroys each infection.
Anti-Rootkit: Scans, detects & removes rootkits on your computer.
Bot Protection: Prevents malicious software turning your PC into a zombie.
Defense+: Protects critical system files and blocks malware before it installs.
Auto Sandbox Technology™: Runs unknown files in an isolated environment where they can cause no damage.
Memory Firewall: Cutting-edge protection against sophisticated buffer overflow attacks.
Anti-Malware Kills malicious processes before they can do harm.
System Requirements:
Windows 7 / Vista / XP SP2, 152 MB RAM / 400 MB space

3 Easy steps for a faster PC

Advanced SystemCare PRO

Advanced SystemCare PRO

Advanced SystemCare PRO provides an always-on, automated, all-in-one PC Healthcare Service with anti-spyware, privacy protection, performance tune-ups, and system cleaning capabilities. This powerful and award-winning precision tool fixes stubborn errors, cleans out clutter, optimizes Internet and download speeds, ensures personal security, and maintains maximum computer performance automatically. Key benefits include:
Keeps your PC running at peak performance: Fully optimizes Windows for ultimate system performance and top Internet speed by unleashing the built-in power of your system, based on how you use your PC and your network configuration. It turns your PC into a business PC, a productive workstation, an entertainment center, a game machine, or a scientific computing PC. Defends PC security with extra protection: Detects and analyzes Windows security environment. Scans and removes spyware and adware using up-to-date definition files. Prevents spyware, hackers and hijackers from installing malicious programs on your computer. Erases and updates your PC's activity histories. One click to solve as many as 10 common PC problems: Advanced SystemCare 5 inherits the ease-of-use from previous versions, with more powerful capabilities. With one click, it scans and repairs ten PC problems and protects your PC from hidden security threats. Real-time optimization with ActiveBoost function: ActiveBoost, technology that actively runs in the background intelligently managing system resources in real-time, constantly detecting inactive resources and optimizing CPU and RAM usage.

A Sneak Peek Into the New Nitro PDF Reader 2

A Sneak Peek Into the New Nitro PDF Reader 2

PDFs are great, there’s no argument there. But reading and editing PDFs can get quite cumbersome, especially when the main contender out there is Adobe Acrobat, which you might need to sell your house in order to buy.

Nitro PDF Reader is an awesome free option whichwe’ve covered here in the past, and today, Nitro is getting a younger brother in the form of Nitro PDF Reader 2. We were allowed an early peek into this new version, and I will take you through all the new (and some of the old) awesome features that I found particularly useful.

Getting Started

Download and installation are as simple as it gets. There are no extra options on installation, although the process itself is pretty lengthy. When you first run Nitro Reader 2, it asks you if you want to make it your default PDF viewer, and it does this even if the older version of Nitro Reader already was your default viewer, so if you’re like me and tend to click “No” automatically without reading the message, you should pay attention when you first run the program.

Browser Integration

One of the nice new features Nitro Reader 2 is supposed to have is the browser integration. I’ve been having a hard time with Foxit’s integration in Firefox, so I was excited to try this.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, Nitro Reader 2 would not open PDFs within my browsers (Firefox, Chrome and IE). At first I thought this was a default viewer problem, but even after uninstalling my previous viewer, Nitro did not take over PDFs and I could not use it to open PDFs in my browsers. Perhaps you’ll have better luck.

Text and Image Extraction

Another Nitro Reader 2 feature is its ability to extract text and images from a PDF. This is not a new feature, but it’s supposed to be improved in this version. Extracting is very easy – there are big extraction buttons in the toolbar, and you can easily extract just text or just images from your PDF.

This feature worked really well and was very quick, especially considering I tried it on a very big and image-rich PDF. It offered many options such as adding line breaks after a specific number of characters for text, or choosing a specific image format for color or monochromatic images.

You can even choose to automatically open the files after creation, but if the extraction created numerous image files, it only opens the folder and not all the files, which is both smart and fortunate.

PDF Creation

The next thing I tried was creating a PDF from a Word document. I had to do this recently, and did so using the “Save as PDF or XPS” add-in for MS Word, which did it really quickly. I was curious what the new Nitro Reader 2 had to offer in this arena.

The PDF creation tool offers much more than a simple “Save as…”. You can control the kind of output you get (web, office or print ready), you can tell Nitro Reader 2 to convert the colors of your images, control the size of the pages of the output and even have your new PDF in landscape format.

I tried creating a PDF which will convert all my images to grayscale. The first time I tried it, the PDF creation was very slow, and it took Nitro Reader 2 about a whole minute to create my PDF, but I contributed that to the fact that it had to convert my images. But alas, when I got my new PDF, the images were still in color. I tried this several more time, and I must say the conversion itself got quicker all the time, with the last one taking only a few second, but my pictures still refused to lose their color.

A little quirk in the conversion was the fact that it showed two progress bars for no apparent reason. When the bottom one got to 100%, the top one just disappeared. Not sure why they were both needed.

Highlights and Annotations

Let me just say this: Nitro Reader 2’s highlights and annotation options are hands-down the best I’ve seen in a PDF reader. First of all, you don’t just get to highlight, you get to underline and cross-over as well. Each of these gets its own color, which you can, of course, change, by right clicking the highlight and choosing “Properties”.

You can also add a note to each kind of highlight, and it will automatically get the color of the highlight. In the properties, you can change the note’s author and its subject, and you can even reply to a note or a highlight left by someone else.

You can also add sticky notes wherever you wish on the document, and customize it to your liking, similar to the highlight notes.

Customization

I won’t go into all the ways you can customize Nitro Reader 2. I might stay up writing until tomorrow morning. I’ll just highlight a few things that I found especially useful or thoughtful.

Nitro Reader 2 features a Quick Access Toolbar, similar to Office, and it can be customized very easily. The thing I liked best is the fact that I can right-click any of the buttons and simply add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. You can choose to have the toolbar under the buttons or above the buttons, and can choose to have only the toolbar and no buttons at all.

Another very cute option, which is new for this version, is the option to get rid of the “Do More With Pro” button that sends you to Nitro’s website where you can buy the pro version. If you don’t like the looks of the button, or simply want the interface to be as minimalist as possible, you can go to Preferences –> Interface, and uncheck “Show the More with Pro button on the Home tab”. And just like that, it’s gone!

Conclusions

There are many features of Nitro PDF Reader 2 I did not even get into, like the ability to create a signature stamp from a scanned image of your signature or the ability to e-mail a PDF to someone from within the program (if you’re using an e-mail client).

The new Nitro PDF Reader 2 is a definite improvement over other free PDF readers out there, at least the ones I tried. It’s fast and responsive, and even large and rich PDFs load quickly. I would be happy to see the browser integration working, or to learn why it didn’t work for me, and when that happens, I will gladly adopt Nitro Reader 2 as my default PDF reader. I might even do so right now, just because I love the highlights and notes so much.

So what did you think of the new version of Nitro Reader? Did you find any bugs that I missed? Got things working better you? Share your experience in the comments.

A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool

A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool

Screencasts are those videos depicting a shot of a computer screen.  There are many applications for such a program such as tutorials and software reviews.  It is also often used to record video chat conversations.  There are quite a few tools for creating screencasts.  Today I would like to review another free screencasting tool that has actually been around for awhile.  It’s free, good at what it does and offers several key features.

The purpose of this article is to review some of those key features. So, buckle in and come along for the ride and see if CamStudio is the tool for your screencasting needs. I will touch on 4 different key features. When you try CamStudio, you will see that there are also other features and I think you’ll be pleased with them, but for the sake of this article I will be focusing on 4 key features of this free screencasting tool.

Regions

CamStudio allows you several different options when it comes to the region of your screen being recorded.  Choose “Region” from the Region dropdown menu and upon clicking Record, you will be able to draw out the square area you would like to see recorded.  Choose “Fixed Region” and you will be able to enter numbers indicating possition and size of the desired screen recording area.  Choose “Full Screen” and the whole screen will be recorded.

You also have the option to turn on autopan which will allow the recording area to follow the cursor around.

This will allow you to record a smaller screen area, effectively zooming in on what you’re working on, and still be able to use the whole screen.

Cursors

One difficulty that arises while creating screencasts is the difficulty to see the mouse cursor.  CamStudio offers some options to combat this issue.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you have several options such as using a different cursor, highlighting the cursor, and even hiding the cursor altogether.

Audio

There are several options with this free screencasting tool when it comes to the audio.  If you are planning on adding some kind of audio later on, you can choose to not record any audio.  However, you can also chose to either record your voice through the microphone or record the sound coming through your computer.

Screen annotations

CamStudio also gives you the ability to add screen annotations, little memos, speech balloons, arrows, etc. that can be added to a screencast to bring attention to areas of the screen.  Creating the annotations is quite simple but there is a bit of a trick to adding them to the screencast.  Don’t worry, we’ll go through it to make sure it isn’t all that difficult.

Find the screen annotations option under the tools menu.  Choose something from the list and double-click it.  Right-clicking on the balloon, cloud, etc. will also give you some needed options such as edit text, edit image, edit transparency and resize.  There are also options to save and clone the annotation.  Unless you want to mess around creating these things in the middle of the recording, you may want to save them for quicker access.

If you want to add the annotation to your screencast, simply pause the recording, go to the annotation you saved, place it where you want it, and continue recording until you want it to disappear.

Camstudio runs on Windows only.

It’s your turn to give your opinion and/or advice!  What tools do you use for creating screencasts?  In what ways to you use screencasting tools?  What are your thoughts about CamStudio?

FormatFactory – A multifunctional Media Converter

FormatFactory – A multifunctional Media Converter

 These days the internet has transformed itself into a large source of media content (apart from other things), be it video, audio or images. However with so many media formats, it often becomes necessary to be able to convert from one type to the other.

FormatFactory is one such tool that can assist you in most of your media conversion needs.

FormatFactory is a multifunctional media converter that supports:

Video Conversion:
From all formats to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF.
Audio Conversion:
From all formats to MP3/WMA/MMF/AMR/OGG/M4A/WAV.
Image Conversion:
From all to JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/PCX/TGA.

Using FormatFactory you can not only convert between all the various formats but you can also perform certain other functions like reducing multimedia file sizes. This can be done by shortening the video/audio (by changing the duration) or by changing the quality with which you want to encode/convert.

You can also attempt to repair damaged audio and video files that just won’t play in your players.

FormatFactory has a special section for converting media files specially for your portable players. FormatFactory allows you to convert your media files to formats supported by your iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, BlackBerry and 3GP for supported devices

Last but not least you can use it to rip CD/DVDs to video files or convert them to ISO images.

Usage:

• 1. Download and complete the simple installation.
• 2. Choose the category and file format you want to convert to from the side bar.
• 3. Add in the desired files. Optionally you can change the output settings (click on output settings).
• 
• 4. Once you have them all queued up hit the start button.
• 
• You can also play with the options to tweak the overall settings and output folder for all your conversions.
• 
• Let us know what you think of FormatFactory in the comments. Do you have another preferred program for your media file conversion needs?