Defragmentating your hard drive

Most defrag tools only allow you to defrag an entire drive. Defraggler lets you specify one or more files, folders, or the whole drive to defragment.
A very much effective and efficient tool as compared to windows built-in defragmentation program.
 The official link is
 http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download.

Some useful Disk Utilities

 HDD Regenerator - Repair bad sectors
Repairs most bad sectors by remagnetizing the disk surface without losing your data. Works independantly of the file system, making it compatible with all PCs, operating systems and hard drives. This software also comes bundled with Hiren's bootable Cd.
http://www.dposoft.net/

Active@Partition Recovery
Recovers most deleted, lost or formatted partitions.
http://www.partition-recovery.com/

Partition Magic
Fast and easy partitioning, Supports all Windows and most Linux file systems. Great for ignoring bad sectors and for advanced partitioning schemes.
www.partitionmagic.com

Ranish
GPL/Freeware partitioning program for use with Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and more. Not much on eye candy, but it works. .
www.ranish.com

gParted
GPL/Freeware partitioning program for use with Windows and Linux. Nice, intuitive interface and comes available as a bootable CD image..
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Acronis Partition Expert
Easy to use interface. Supports Windows and Linux partitions.
http://acronis.com/products/partitionexpert/

HD Tune
HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.http://www.hdtune.com/

Most of this tools come bundled with hiren's bootable cd

Drive Diagnostic Utilities

Every major drive manufacturer have their drive diagnostic utilities. These utilities will allow you to test & diagnose your drive. Some utilities also allow you to "low-level" format (write zeros) or enable/disable certain features on your drive.


Hitachi / IBM - DFT "Drive Fitness Test"

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Works with all manufacturers

Western Digital "Data Lifeguard"
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#dlgtools 
Works with WD drives only

Maxtor "Powermax"
http://files2get.com/software/soft2/dyski-twarde-(hdd)-narzedzia-firmowe/powermax.exe
Works with all manufacturers

Fujitsu "FJDT"
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Fujitsu-Diagnostic.shtml 
Works with fujitsu models only . See also Tosibha link

Samsung "hutil"

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/ 

Now that the sale of HDD division of Samsung Electronics to Seagate Technology Plc("Seagate") has been finalized, Seagate will provide all customer support including the warranty service of Samsung HDD..

Seagate "Seatools"
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools
Works with Seagate drives only

Toshiba 
http://storage.toshiba.com/storage-services-support/warranty-support/software-utilities
This diagnostic tool is available for use by customers who feel their Fujitsu Branded Toshiba hard drive may not be operating normally. It is only designed for use with Fujitsu Branded Toshiba ATA/IDE hard drives. 

Testing your laptop fans

If you need a tool that can change your computer's fan speeds, read the temperatures of your motherboard and your hard disk, read voltages and fan speeds and check the status of your hard disk using S.M.A.R.T. or SCSI attributes, then  SpeedFan is the software to go. Check for link below:

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

How to Test Power Supply

Power supply is failing to be the cause of spontaneous reboots or some serious error message.

How to do a  power supply test may be an important step that must be done.

There are two ways to test the power supply, namely through manual testing using a multimeter and testing through a power supply tester.  Both ways are equally effective for power supply testing, and definitive choice is yours.

Here’s more information that can help you choose which method is best from both methods mentioned above in the test power supply.

Power Supply Testing with a Multimeter


Advantages

To test the power supply is only needed a Multimeter with a screwdriver. Disconnect the power supply your computer from computer case, then read the instructions on the side of the power supply box for a list of values in each color of cable voltage, which are physically the cables’ ends on DC power supply connector.

Attach your power supply back into the computer case, turn on your computer, then you can perform measurements only on the integrated DC voltage power supply at the top where the connector mounted on the main board.

Disadvantages

Power supply testing manually can be dangerous if you are not very cautious and will take a bit of work to be able to really test your power supply.

Caution: Do not open and / or touching the inside of the power supply box will be very dangerous.

Power Supply Testing with a Power Supply Tester



Advantages

The result of test power supply using a power supply tester can be conducted with ease and gives results that are more rigorous and conclusive, With ways that can disappear into factor of human error and negligence. So testing using a power supply tester become more secure and remove the fear and avoid electrical shock AC.

How to find drivers for Unknown Devices

Unknown Device Identifier

Unknown Device Identifier enables you to identify the yellow question mark labeled Unknown Devices in Device Manager and reports you with a detailed summary for the manufacturer name, OEM name, device type, device model and even the exact name of the unknown devices. With the collected information, you can contact your hardware manufacturer for support or search the Internet for the corresponding driver with just a simple click.

Download Unknown Device Identifier Now | 849 KB

Connect Two Computers using a Crossover Cable

 Connect two computers together without going through a wireless network?
You can network two computers and then share files and folders, by using a crossover cable.

Step 1 Configure IP Addresses

Usually, if you are using a crossover cable to connect two computers, the computers are not connected to a LAN network. In this case, you will need to configure static IP addresses for each computer.

You have to make sure that both computers have IP addresses that are on the same subnet. For example, if you give one computer an IP address of 192.168.0.1, then you should give the second computer an IP of 192.168.0.2.

If you used the above IP addresses, you should use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. If you use an incorrect subnet mask, the connection will not work.

Lastly, the value for the default gateway should be the same on both machines. You can pick which IP address you want to use, but use it on both computers for the default gateway. Below is how my setup looks for one computer:

Step 2 Crossover Cable

The second thing you need to verify is that you actually have a proper crossover cable. Basically, there are a few different types of crossover cables, but it's best to get the standard crossover cable where the green and orange pairs are swapped and the brown and blue pairs stay in the same position.


The only pins that need to be crossed are 1,3 and 2,6. So just check your cable on both end and make sure it matches the diagram.

Step 3 Local User Accounts

If you are having problems accessing files both ways, you may have to create a user account on each computer that has the same name and same password. This helps get past any kind of Access is Denied errors that may pop up.

Make sure the accounts are administrator accounts also! It's best to create a new account rather than rename a current account.

Step 4 Disable Firewalls

Finally, you should disable the firewall on both computers to ensure that none of the file sharing ports are being blocked. You can do this by going to Control Panel and then Windows Firewall. Click on Off.

System Restore Tool Displays a Blank Calendar in Windows XP

When you run the System Restore tool on a Windows XP-based computer, the calendar on the left side of the "Choose a Restore Point" window is not displayed.

This behavior can occur if the file association for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) component (.htc) files is not in the registry.

To resolve this behavior, verify that the following keys are in the registry. If one of the registry keys is not present, create the key, and then add the values that belong to the corresponding key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htc
Value name: Content Type
Value data: text/x-component

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\.htc
Value name: Content Type
Value data: text/x-component

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\text/x-component
Value name: CLSID
Value data: {3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}

Create a second entry with the following values:
Value name: Extension
Value data: .htc

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}
Value name ="Microsoft Html Component"

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}\InProcServer32
Value name: Default
Value data: "C:\Windows\System32\Mshtml.dll"

Create a second entry with the following values:
Value name: "ThreadingModel"
Value data: "Apartment"

NOTE: This procedure assumes that Windows XP is installed in the C:\Windows folder. Make sure to change C:\Windows to the appropriate <windows_folder> if Windows XP is installed in a different location.

To merge all of the information at one time, you can copy and paste the following text into a text editor, such as Notepad, and then save it as a .reg file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htc]
   "Content Type"="text/x-component"
   @="htcfile"

   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\text/x-component]
   "CLSID"="{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}"
   "Extension"=".htc"

   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}]
   @="Microsoft Html Component"
   [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3050f4f8-98b5-11cf-bb82-00aa00bdce0b}\InProcServer32]
   @="C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\mshtml.dll"
   "ThreadingModel"="Apartment""

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.htc]
   "Content Type"="text/x-component"
   @="htcfile"



Source