Software List

List of Great FREE Software

AVI2DVD - Burn a DVD to play in your DVD player from an AVI movie file on your hard drive.

CD Burner XP - Burn music CDs, computer files, and more with this free CD burning application

CutePDF Writer - create PDFs from Microsoft Word, Exel, Powerpoint, and any program that can print. Create PDFs for free!

Daemon Tools - creates a virutal CD/DVD Drive so that you can load Game files/discs that are disc images or ISO files, it also lets you watch DVD ISO files on your hard drive. Definitely a Gamer's Choice program! (You don't have to have the disc in your drive, or hear it spinning!)

DVD Decrypter - Remove most DVD copy protections, and copy DVD movie files to your hard drive, or create an ISO file to burn/ watch on your computer without the DVD disc.

DVDFab Decrypter - rips DVD video files to a hard drive and removes all the newest copy protections

DVD Shrink - this DVD burning program will shrink DVD video files, discs, or ISO files to fit on a 4.7GB disc. It's compression technology creates/burns files that will fit on a standard 4.7GB disc and still look great like the original. It also allows you to remove DVD video clips/extras that you don't need/want.

Irfanview - view images quickly, resize images, automatically resize, rotate, or rename many images.

MPlayer - simple, easy to use video player that includes many popular video codecs pre-installed. Simply drag your video file to the shortcut and watch it. Mplayer is great for watching stubborn video files or files that won't open with Quicktime or Windows Media player.

Printfolders (alt. Download link)- print a list of files/folders (saves to a text file)

Quintessential Player - clean, fast, and free music/video player, and CD Ripper

Source Edit - edit HTML, PHP, and other source code, and FTP server uploads can be set to run every time you save the file.

Videora iPod Converter - converts DVD video files to the iPod video format (requires DVD Decrypter)

WASTE - create a private P2P network on your College Campus to share music, movies, and software, users can only see the network when connected by a friend already on WASTE.

Wink - record flash video demos of computer tasks (can record audio)

Yamipod - copy files from your iPod to your friend's computer, or copy files from his iPod to yours. Yamipod allows you to manage the files on your iPod without using iTunes!

ZipFree 2000 - create ZIP files for FREE! Uses a right click send-to menu in explorer

Prevent Reboots

(Found article on pcmag.com on 10-24-06)

Prevent Reboots
ARTICLE DATE: 10.11.06

Many people leave their PCs on all of the time. That often means dozens of open windows, and information that hasn't been saved as recently as possible. There's nothing worse than going back to your PC and seeing a message that says "Windows recently downloaded and installed an important security update to help protect your computer. This update required an automatic restart." Or, while you are working, you may grow tired of the nagging little pop-up window with a countdown that tries to reboot your computer in 15 seconds. A simple edit to the system Registry will end this annoyance and save you from losing potentially hours of work if a reboot occurs when you aren't there to prevent it.

In fact, the U.K. publication The Register recently reported that a computer consultant in the U.K. has invoiced Bill Gates for £1,200 for "sabotaging" his work, left open during a critical system update reboot. Even if you tell Windows Update that you wish to perform a custom manual installation of new software, updates can still be pushed down to your system. Most of these critical updates are system-level files that require a reboot to fix problems properly, but you can still make Windows work the way you want it to.

Click Start, then Run. Then type regedit and press Enter. Be careful in the Registry, following the directions slowly and reading twice before clicking once. With the Registry Editor opened, click and expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies and finally Microsoft\Windows. Right-click on Windows and select New\Key with your left mouse. Type WindowsUpdate and press Enter. This will create a new folder.

Now right-click on that folder and create another new key, this one named AU, and press Enter. AU stands for Auto Update. Turn to the right-hand pane, where an entry reads (Default); right-click on the white space and select New DWORD Value. Enter the string NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers, and press Enter. Now double-click that entry and change the Value Data to a 1, with the Base button of Hexadecimal selected.

Click on File | Exit, after which the Registry autosaves (just as other applications ought to but don't), and reboot. Once Windows loads this value it should never force a reboot when you are not present. It's a small price to pay for regaining control of your computer.

Copy Playstation 2 disc screenshot

Screenshot from Alcohol 120% for copying a Playstation 2 disc to the hard drive.