InternetServices

Nero Burning ROM (32-bit) is a utility for writing data and CD audio to CD-R and CDRW disks. It supports all standard CDROM formats, and can create CDs that are bootable from the floppy disk or a hard drive partition. For Audio CD recording, the program supports Track-Once and Disc-at-Once and Disc-at -Once operation, extraction of multiple audio tracks, speed setting of digital audio extraction, playing tracks in digital and analog formats, format conversion on-the-fly, variable pause length, jitter and CRC correction, and a variety of filters. Nero Burning ROM can also be used for CD copying and c r e a t I n g images of CD-ROMs. There are of burn options, and the program supports all major CD-R and CD-RW recorders. http://www.ahead.de/en/Function.htm

X-Setup

A tweaker’s dream, this program allows the user to modify over 400 hidden options in Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, ICQ, NeoPlanet , Opera, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ and much more. The program lets you tweak the appearance, general usage, hardware, Internet, network and system configurations. It also includes wizards that enable you to change your settings, in a step-by-step process http://www.xteq.com

Registry Crawler

Registry Crawler enables power users and developers to quickly find and configure Registry settings. A search engine allows the user to find Registry information based on search criteria. Results are displayed in a list, allowing you to access any key with a single click. Registry Crawler has built-in support for bookmarks: you can bookmark any key in the Registry and then access it directly from the system tray. This feature allows you to create a set of Registry keys that you frequently access, eliminating the need to manually open the registry editor. http://www.4developers.com

98Lite

98Lite is a custom installer that allows you to install Windows 98 for the first time, without Internet Explorer browser and Desktop integration. It excludes Internet Explorer 4.0, Active Desktop Components, Internet Connection Wizard, Windows Update, Welcome Introdution/Tour and Online Service providers. However, it dose not remove Internet Explorer from an existing installation of Windows 98. http://www.98lite.net

Ranish Partition Manager

Ranish Partition Manager is a menu-driven utility for partitioning hard drives and controlling boot-up sequences. Partition manager lets you create, delete, and resize partitions; create a password-protected boot menu; create a password-protected boot menu ; hide and unhide partitions; detect boot viruses; and boot from a second hard drive. The utility is very useful if you have more than one operating system on a PC. This newest version supports disks larger than 8 Gigabytes. http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part

More Properties

More properties allows access to customizable features in Windows 9x that are not accessible form the standard shell. Similar to Microsoft’s TweakUI but with more options, this is a program you will use if you want to change those standard icons for folders, control panel etc. This program can also act like a mini TweakUI as it allows you to change many of the default Windows settings. http://home.global.co.za/oilvierd/imaginary/

Tweaki… for the power User

This is TweakUI on steroids. Tweaki gives you all the usual Desktop management abilities. You can create your own context-sensitive right-click menus using Tweaki’s Right Click Wizard. This allows you to launch an application other than the one it is registered with. Tweaki also helps you manage apps that launch at system startup-including those hidden in the registry-and gives you control over Windows 9x / NT’s hidden boot options. http://www.jermar.com/prod01.htm

Magic Menus

MagicMenus lets you add your own menu commands to special folders such as My Computer, Recycle, you can add a command to open your Web browser to the context menu of My Computer. The possibilities are endless! MagicMenus 2.0 has a wizard-style interface, which guides you easily through the process of creating a new menu item. http://www.bramble3.demon.co.uk

RegClean Very handy and easy-to-use applet that cleans the registry of ‘leftovers’ that accumulate after you install and delete programs indiscriminately. Originally created for programmers, RegClean is a great addition to anyone’s System Tools folder. Run it and you get a smaller, faster-loading registry. http://www.microsoft.com

Folder Size

How many times you have wondered what the size of a particular folder is? Wonder no more-use Folder Size. Folder Size shell Extension for Windows 9x and NT adds a new tab to the properties dialog that displays folder/drive sizes. To access. The options (units, sort and so on) a contextual menu is provided. Folder size shell Extension delivers useful information and integrates well with the existing structure of Windows 9x and NT. To activate this extension, right-click on a folder (or on a drive) and click on properties in the contextual menu. Windows Explorer displays the properties dialog with a new page named Size http://www.essi.fr/~berger

Split Files

Spilt Files Shell Extension is a free, helpful Windows 95 and Windows NT utility designed for anyone who frequently works with oversized files. It works with the Windows 95 Explorer right-click menu to offer a quick and easy way to spilt large files, directly on to floppies or to any other drive on your system. Eight predefined file sizes are available, along with a custom setting to enable you to specify the file size or file number. A merge facility enables you to rejoin split files. You can even create a self-executable, which dose not require Spilt Files to be installed in order to rejoin the files. http://www.essi.fr/~berger

Date/Time

Date/Time is a free shell extension for Windows 9x and Windows NT. It adds a new page to the properties dialog for files that let you interactively change the date and time for files. You can change the date/time a file was created/ and or last modified. Options include unknown (no date or time appears in the file list), current date/ time and custom date/time. Entry is intuitive and the extension looks as if it standard Windows equipment. To active this extension, right-click on a file and click on Properties in the context menu. Windows Explorer displays the properties dialog with a new page named Date/Time. http://www.essi.fr/~berger

StartXplorer

StartXplorer mirrors a directory with shortcuts, and allows you to create a kind of Explorer in your Start Menu. This is ideal for building a shortcut mirror of your MP3s subdirectory in the start Menu, and if you can play MP3s just as if you were starting a program. With this program you do not have to use Explorer again. But remenber this program does work on computers that do not have Internet Explorer 4.0/5.0 installed. http://www.mlin.net

SmartCopy

SmartCopy is a copy application which you can easily control. You can collect files from different directories and copy them to one destination. Users can also specify the blocksize when copying files, which can be anything from 1 byte to 10 MB. Best of all you do not need to install the application-it is just one file, so you just copy the file and it is ready to run.

Startup Control Panel

Startup Control Panel is a nifty applet that enables you to easily specify which programs run when you computer starts. It’s simple to use, very small and won’t burden your system. A valuable tool for system administrators, the applet resides in the Control Panel. The dialog box contains five to six tabs, depending on your system configuration. Each tab represents one place where a program can be registered to run at system startup. This tool also features the following : Startup (user): The Startup folder in the Start Menu. Startup (common): The common (all users) Startup folder in the Start Menu. Appears for NT and multi-user Win9x systems.
HKLM / Run : The Run registry key located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
HKCU / RUN: The Run registry key located in HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
Services: System services that are started before the user logs on. Dose not appear on NT.
Run Once: Started once and once only at the next system starup.
http://www.mlin.net

Desktop Utilities

MaDdoG PaneKiller

The Windows Start Menu is under-developed, and it shows. Panekiller is the answer to what the start Menu should have been. With Panekiller installed, you do not have to use Windows Explorer at all. You can access the Desktop, My Computer, Control Panels,(and your hard drives, program files and documents) right from the Start Menu. Panekiller also gives you configurable, menu-like access to every document and application on your computer. http://www.maddogsw.com/panekiller

WindowBlinds

To change the look and feel of Windows, you do not have to always change the shell-use WindowsBlinds. WindowsBlinds is a utility designed to change the way look at Windows. It allows you to completely customize your desktop by changing the style of title bars, buttons and toolbars. You can change the look of buttons and check boxes by assigning them skins or personalities. You can also create your own skins, choose from the four that are included in the program or download additional ones. You can also choose to exclude certain programs from WindowBlinds if you don’t want to change their appearances. http://www.stardock.com

PowerDesk Utilities 98

Probably the best file management application available for download, PowerDesk adds wide-ranging functionality to Windows 9x and NT. The product features a powerful file manager designed to overcome the deficiencies of Windows Explorer, built-in-zip and unzip capabilities, and built-in-file viewers to preview files instantly. It also includes a robust file finder, a hard drive space manager, folder synchronisaton and comparison, and a broad spectrum of other tools designed to simplify and enhance Windows file management. http://www.mijenix.com

WordProcessors

WrodTabs

Who needs MS Word when WordTabs is here? This small program (1.4 MB Download ) features standard (text) and RTF (rich text format) editing, an option to insert pictures/ objects, spell checking, glossary functions, favourite files and folders, and a tabbed interface. It also has a built-in-filer, indexing by line/ paragraph, previous files, positions and print setup. In a free word processor, what more can one ask for ?

TextPad

Let’s say you’re working on a very long text file and you need to compare what you’ve written in line 10 to what you just typed in line 1031. In a normal editor, you should be prepared to do quite a bit of scrolling. But not with TextPad, whose split-screen feature lets you view screens in as many as four windows. This is one of the best editors available, and comes with a long list of features. http://www.textpad.com

Graphics Tools

ACDSee32

ACDSee32 is a fast image viewer and browser. Features include: rapid decoding with incremental display, keyboard shortcuts, selectable quantisation / dithering modes for high quality output, image browser, file management system, shell file actions, 4DOS file descriptions, drag-and-drop viewing, slide show mode, batch printing, quick conversion to wall paper and more. It supports practically all image formats. This newest release comes with a photo enhancer, an enhanced image browser and an HTML thumbnail generator. http://www.acdsystems.com/index.htm

SnagIt (32-bit)

If you frequently capture videos and screens on your computer, SnagIt is the utility for you. It’s a screen, text, video capture and conversion utility. You can capture the screen, a window, the last active window or a region of the screen. Images can be saved as BMP, PCX, TIF, GIF PNG or JPEG formats. You can save desktop animation sequences, including video and user interface activities, as AVI files (complete with sound). With JPEG, you can specify the level of compression you want. http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/index.htm

FontFinder

FontFinder is a tool for installing, removing, previewing and managing True Type fonts. You can quickly display the entire character set, zoom in on any character and copy characters to the Clipboard. You can also view a character’s decimal, hexadecimal or ASCII equivalent. Lists of fonts or single font sample sheets can be previewed and printed. A Windows Explorer-style tool lets you browse font files, preview fonts and view font information for both installed and uninstalled fonts.

Music

Audio Catalyst

You have a huge collection of CDs but in every CD there are only a few songs that you like. It would be troublesome to keep changing CDs. Use Audio Catalyst and transform your CD collection to MP3 files. The product dose not go through your soundcard to rip the copies. So the copies made are completely digital, and original sound quality is maintained. http://www.xingtech.com

FreeAmp

Want further evidence that the open source movement is truly underway? Take a look at FreeAmp, the open source MP3 player. This player is cross-platform, meaning that you can run it on Linux, Mac and Windows. As with open source, this piece of code is truly optimised. The program is fast, and the list of features is impressive. http://www.freeamp.org

Miscellaneous Utilities

Cacheman

This utility tweaks disk cache settings and prevents frequent swapping of the data to disk, resulting in improved performance. It solves one of the biggest problems affecting Windows 9x. After the available physical memory (RAM) is exhausted, Win 9x starts to use virtual memory instead of flushing the disk caches. This puts a strain on your system. To correct this, you no longer need to edit the SYSTEM.INI file and the registry-Cacheman comes to the rescue! Just run Cacheman, select your optimisation method and reboot your system after saving the changes. http://www.outertech.com

MemTurbo

Finished defragging your hard disk? Now get ready to defrag your memory! MemTurbo defrags the RAM and flushes out unwanted programs from memory. The greatest advantage of MemTurbo is that it dose not use any drivers or VXDs, or anything outside its own directory. http://www.memturbo.com