Extremely useful programs

[Alucard]

Ok heres a couple that are focused specifically on hardware.

-Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder.

If you've ever wondered what your windows CDKey is and you've lost your case or whatever but you NEED it to reinstall? This program is for you. Very awesome.

http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/



-Belarc Adviser

Ever thought to yourself GEE IM TOO STUPID TO KNOW WHATS IN MY OWN PC DERPDERP?! This program when run opens up a browser window that isnt a browser and shows you everything thats in your pc, from your cpu, motherboard model number, ram, video card, and even down to taking the Jelly Bean finder above that 1 step forward and listing your cdkeys for windows and other programs on your system. It also has a bunch of other crap. Very useful.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html


-CCLeaner

This little tool is pretty good. Removes files that are unused on your pc and speeds it up slightly if its clogged down with too much shit installed over time. At the top of theprogram it also lists your cpu, video card, and other info which is useful.

http://www.ccleaner.com/



- Codec packs

Theres a few out there. One is K-lite player and also Shark007 which also works very well for win7 for HD media etc. There are others but these two should be fine.

http://shark007.net/

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...codec_pack.htm


- Alternate media players

Couple interesting ones out there aside from Media player/Classic, BSplayer, VLC, and KMPlayer which I prefer to use. These ones come with alot of packed in codecs so they're pretty awesome as is. No point installing all of them unless you plan to see which one you like more to use. I prefer KMPlayer myself.

http://kmplayer.en.softonic.com/

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

http://www.bsplayer.org/


Various mentions because I'm getting twitchy writing all this--


Malwarebytes. Help protect your pc.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Also the Microsoft free virus scanner is probably the best of the other free scanners out there.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/


Other protection stuff

Ad-aware + spybot S&D. Get rid of spyware crap.


http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

http://www.lavasoft.com/






All the above are free stuff. I think a couple have a pay version but that just goes an ads things extra to them. Some stuff that ARENT free but are mega awesome are as follows

O&O. Best defragging program around. Makes your pc sooooo happy.

http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodefrag/


RegistryBooster. f your pc is acting STUPID with some programs crashing etc, this one fixes problems and makes it act more normal. Personal experience, I love this program.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/registrybooster/


CoreAVC. Another codec pack thats great for HD files on weaker systems, such as netbooks etc.

http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc



Thats the ones that come to my mind. It was only meant to be alist of 2 or 3 programs but I got carried away.

[Reality]

I would like to also recommend..

ImgBurn
http://www.imgburn.com/

I have used this little guy some 50 times now. Wonderful program.

CPU z
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

A very handy and simple program that can tell you almost everything about the hardware from your computer. I use it often when I need to know what firmwares my parts are using.

[Badrats Studio]

Keep it roll. We need this thread.

[Alucard]

Nice one that cpuz program. Very simple and easy to read aswell.

[Zack]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/files/

many of these are must haves. ill post more later.

[Reality]

Hand Brake DVD ripper and Video converter.
http://handbrake.fr/

I have been using Handbrake back when it was called Cocktail for Mac OSX 10.3. Now Handbrake is on every major platform. This excellent little app is a free open source DVD ripper. Its powerful, fast, simple, and stable. Besides being one of the best on the market for DVDs it also doubles as a video converter. So if you ever do something like save flash videos you can convert them into friendlier formates for media players.

The program.


Extra options.


The results.

[Vegetto]

ohh now that looks handy

[Joe Redifer]

Handbrake is OK, but the Mac sucks when it comes to DVD ripping (MPEG Streamclip used to be the best, but it doesn't work very well with 10.6). So instead I use DVD Shrink or something like that in Windows. I like it because it lets you set your in and out points easily (though not as easily as MPEG Streamclip did when it worked). Handbrake does not let you do this.

[Havoc2049]

This thread should be sticky'ed.

[Zack]

http://www.mp3tag.de/en

best mp3 tagging program i've used, and it's free!

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

best ps3 streaming program.

http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

free program to modify your monitor resolution, refresh rate, graphics card settings, and some other things. very useful for custom resolutions.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

lightweight notepad replacement with a lot of good features.

http://www.abstractpath.com/powermenu/

another lightweight program which lets you minimize any window to tray, set it to always be on top, or add transperency. really good for windows xp users.

http://www.hdtune.com/

harddrive benchmarking/testing program. gives you a lot of info about your hd.

[Joe Redifer]

Originally Posted by AtariX

This thread should be sticky'ed.

Good idea. DONE!

[Reality]

I have used The PS3 media server before. Its really cool for what it tries to do. I only wish though the PS3 did buffering streaming instead of real time streaming. That way it could load a little bit of the movie before playing it back. Were right now it tries to live stream it and it just lags all to fail.

[Zack]

your processor or connection speed (wireless?) isn't fast enough. you can lower the stream quality in the transcode settings tab to fix the lag. try the preset keyint=25:vqmax=5:vqmin=2

[Reality]

Its the wireless most likely. The Ps3 only supports 802.11b/g after all. Not ideal for streaming HD videos.

[Alucard]

Or you could go out and buy a proper media player you cheap bastards.