PC TECH TOOLKIT

[Mighty_Jah]

Hi....peeps...this might come in handy for any would be techies out there..!

Back in da Olden dayz... :lol: (Blame Pyle and Lucy for making me feel really old, sob sob) :wink:

Prolly like me you used to carry a big bag of disks and few screwies around when doing repairs on site...hoping you had all you needed to try and get Old sicky PC, back up and running, get paid, and move on to your next job.

Im now, using one of those new fangled USB stick watchamacallits.

with a few nice proggies on that would hopfully help repair most things software based, or clear most viruses trojans, spam bots etc.

Ive pretty much narrowed it down to just a few essential items...and was just wondering if any of you guys have any little gems you wouldnt leave the house without.


Heres mine:

Double Driver ( Scans, detects, backsup and restores all drivers )

SiSoftware Sandra Pro 2007 ( Tells you loads of info about any machine you install it on)

Belarc Advisor ( Same as above not as nice though)

PC Wizard ( Same as above diagnostic tool)

AVG 7.5 Anti Virus ( Catches most known bugs and updates all the new virus definitions)

AVG 7.5 Anti Spyware ( Gets rid of most spam bots, intrusions etc with the odd exception)

Adaware SE Personal ( Gets rid of Spy ware and some things AVG cant deal with )

Spyware search and Destroy ( For same reasons as above)

Winzip ( For Obvious reasons)
WinRar ( See Above)

Damn NFO File Reader ( Comes in handy sometimes! for > ROR Deviance FOSI etc (Wink)

Key Skills (Win Key finder)

DISC Info ( Examines all kinds of Disks IDE DVD CD SCSI etc)

Disk Keeper ( Nice Defrag optimisation prog)

Tune up Utilities 2006 ( Nice piece of kit for optimisation of disks, ram CPU's etc loads of nice tools, undelete etc)

Windows Media Player Codecs DIVX etc

NERO 7 Premium ( For when XP wont burn disks

Windows SP2/SP3 Service packs ( Handy to have in certain situations, although not essential)

With a couple of Brute force tools I cant mention on here.

Together with my little fold out PC tool kit/Screw driver set.

Im all set to rock n roll, unless Sicky PC is that knackered, or needs new parts, then Ill just pick it up and take it back the workshop...lol

Maybe you guys can think of anything Ive forgot to mention or add anything you swear by, when on the job...!

And lastly a word for all the newbies just getting started or thinking of doing repairs, builds etc....DONT GO THERE...Its a friggin nightmare at times. Just kidding !!! nah just be brave, but not silly, if in doubt ask or post on here...there is always someone on hand to help here..which makes this place one of the best resources for PC Probs..!

Oh and...... ALWAYS..........ALWAYS.........BE SAFE.......THEY BITE!!!

Cheers Peeps.

Regards Mighty.... :wink:

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[Mighty_Jah]

@ PP >>> :lol:

http://www.kctools.com.au/images/TOOLS/TOOL%20JPEGS/TOOL%20JPEGS%20INC%20DESCRIPTION/15025%20SLEDGE%20HAMMER.jpg

http://www.ergo.co.uk/Images/global/mains/crowbar.jpg

http://www.flipsigns.com/dynamite.gif


Hope this helps mate...!

M... :wink:

[Anonymous]

[Removed at the request of the author]

[Des]

Nice post some very good info I to use some of the things you got down I also take some spare fans and a cleaning kit and a power supply tester

[Firerat]

hope you don't mind that I made it sticky

I used to use bootable CDs made with isolinux
http://syslinux.zytor.com/

Basically anything that would normally boot from a Floppy could be chosen from a menu, isolinux would then emulate a floppy drive with memdisk and boot the floppy image

Memtest, powermax, seagate tools, etc etc

I made a mini linux based on mprime for linux
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
just some basic scripts to figure out if the system was dual CPU ( or psudo Dual with Intel's HT ) so it would launch two instances of Prime and load the CPU properly, had to use two as I noticed that my P4 was only loaded 50% with one
I also modifed memtest so that it would give a Permanent beep on a single error, very anoying :twisted: but handy if you are testing lots of memory all day
I've miss placed my local copies :( , but I think some copies are still knocking about in Tech

Anyway, syslinux can be used to boot Pen Drives in much the same way ;)

[Mighty_Jah]

Interesting read on diagnostics

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-19176921_ITM

Mighty... :wink:

[Sleepy]

I had (still do!) the wonderful Ultimate Boot CD, which is actually similar to what Firerat mentions above. However, i have also downloaded the Windows version of the UBCD which loks interesting, although i have yet to try it out yet! Anyway, links are here:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ - The Linux version

http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm - The Windows version

This really is the dogs bollix in terms of software tools to repair, restore, or diagnose almost any computer problem.

[landwomble]

hiren's boot cd...is *the* tool. That, and a Knoppix CD.

[Sleepy]

For when working on one of those horrid cheapo computer cases, this becomes an item you absolutely must have in your PC TECH TOOLKIT:

http://searchviews.com/archives/plaster-band-aid.gif

OUCH!

[jasonbriggs]

Maybe slightly off topic but......

A while back when XP first came out, When installing windows I figured that most of the bottleneck of todays machines is the the CD-Rom transfer rate. The installation is speeded up a fair amount if your windows is ona Bootable DVD.

After while i fiddled about a bit and you can aget a few different versions of windows and common software on one DVD.

You just need to use thier serials and installions are much quicker.

(provided your pc has a DVD drive of course).

[TheMadGeek]

My USB pen has:
Adobe Photoshop+crack
AdAware SE
Spybot S&D
AVG
LimeWire PRO
Firefox
PortableApps
BSOD Screensaver

[Shawz]

Hi Guys,

My boss has asked me to get a comprehensive list of software that all engineers should have with them. Apart from what has already been listed any other suggestions.

Also does anyone have any suggestions for good password recovery software that can be used by several people over several sites?
It would need to be for things like Microsoft Office apps and Win XP/Vista etc

[Guia]

Here is a list whats on my thumb-drive and its companion (the Windows Ultimate Boot CD, modified to include Intel/Dell SATAs, DOS6.22/win98 floppy boot / copywipe boot and Ranish Partition)

3D - Zoom3 / FR-41 / FR-07 / Heaven7 (Good for testing, or getting bored)

Games
Gate88 - Small Multiplayer RTS
Truck dismount - good for a laugh.

Audio - Screamer Radio - good for long jobs or to break some silence in the office

Antivirus
AVG Free edition - Always good to have on (esp when rebuilding PCs)

Hardware - CPU-Z - Brilliant when a customer wants more RAM and you don't have to open the case to find out if a slot is free and what type.

Anti-antivirus
Norton Removal Tool - Norton AV/360 always causes problems.
McAfee Removal Tools - McAfee is pretty much like norton, causes problems!

Keys
Jellybean's Keyfinder - Gets serial keys from XP/office
Belarc Advisor - Provides lots of detail about a computer, including serials, etc

Network -
LSPfix - Sort out buried winsock issues.
WinsockXPFix - Reset everything to do with winsock/networking.

Hotfixes / Registry patches
ExplorerAVIfix.reg - Fixes AVI Thumbnails crashing explorer
ie7menufix.reg - Shifts IE7 menu to the top, rather than in the middle.
SSL.bat - Fixes IE6/7 SLL pages not being displayed (anything https://)
Ie7-DisableClickToActivate.exe - Some customers complain about the click to activate in IE.
YourComputerIsInfected.reg - Removes all Sharedtasks which causes threatening spyware messages in the windows system tray.
XPFirewall.bat - Fixes XP Firewall to working form.
VistaUSB - When the first Vista retail came out, most USB Devices where not detected properly, it is a hotfix to erm..fix it!

Spyware
Hijackthis - Indispensable expert tool! A must!
SmitFraudFix - Old Spyware removal kit
ProcessExplorerNT - Hunt down processes and see what launched what.
Unlocker - Unlock used files and delete them. good for hidden/used programs
Fixoutware - Another spyware removal kit, removes DNS hijack (85.255.*.*) and relevant files.

Misc Software
xirsoft's dialupass - Get dialup settings, good for backup settings and restoring later
xirsoft's emailpass - Get email settings from outlook/express/etc..
CCleaner - Get rid of ...well, crap..
Microsoft Verifier (built-in) - Used to pin down BSOD errors, esp bugchecks.

Used Tools on UBCD
Password Renew - Reset Admin passwords
Registry Restore Wizard - Last restore if chkdsk doesn't fix registry loading errors.
Remote regedit - Pro-active removal of RUN entries
Xplorer² - Good File explorer
chkdsk - Fixes most XP/Vista Booting issues.
copywipe - Replicate HDD to HDD (resizes partition too)

Most important thing of all, have a thumb drive which has a read-only lock on it! The amount of times I've had to recopy all my tools when a virus decides to write to the damn thing!

[Shawz]

Thanks Guia it looks good

[jman]

hirens boot CD is pretty substantial - albeit a little outdated. That said - if it's bad enough to need a boot CD it should have everything you'll need. There's another one I've tried called ERD commander. This is fantastic - it's for windows only but it binds to your current windows install and allows you to recover passwords, remove problem drivers; all the usual good stuff.

As to a list of software that every engineer should have - it really depends on what type of engineer they are. My USB drive has all kinds of stuff on there but it's mostly related to networking / network infrastructure stuff. Maybe it'd be good to get a collection of utilities and break it up into different areas? Network engineer, MS engineer (ha, just click 'next' :P), software engineer etc...

Not sure if we're allowed to post links here or not, but winaddons (google it) do a top 300 freeware post which is regularly updated and has some great stuff in there.

[cleggypdc]

ah yeah i've used winaddons for integrating the tools into my XP install, i use nlite and you can add the software in, create a new unattended xp disk and run it, half an hour later your XP is up and runiing, has firefox, avg, putty, imgburn, and some other stuff all ready to be used instead of having to set the bugger up again.

Has anybody used the bootable XP cd you can get, i think it is russian. I had it at some point, was quite weird and i didn't see the point in it when i can use linux

[PeterStoba]

Cleggy, how do you add program in nLite, i was playing with it last night when my net was down, i could only add drivers