EraserDrop – Drop Files Unto An Icon To Erase Securely

This little Icon pictured here, is not just an Icon – it’s an active Icon. Let me explain – when the free portable application EraserDrop is active, this Icon is what you see. The Icon floats on the Desk Top or, on top of any opened applications. Simply by dragging and dropping selected files, or folders, onto this Icon, permanently, and securely, erases the files/folders from your system.

You may change the position of the Icon by holding down the “Left Shift” key and moving it to a desired position. As well, you may “Hide” the Icon by choosing “Hide” from the context menu.

A quick walkthrough:

For this review, I’ve selected 14 files from an old download folder (1773 Files – 17.5 GB – I download a lot of stuff for testing, most of which never makes it to these pages), dragged and dropped them onto the EraserDrop Icon – and ……

gone – deleted – securely – never to be seen again. Following an erasure, an “Erasing Report” is provided, as shown below.

The erasing method can be set by opening the right click context menu and, selecting from a variety of increasingly more complex erasure settings.

You can choose to wipe both the Recycle Bin, and wipe the HD’s free space, from within the context menu.

The options menu will allow you – amongst other selections – to choose a “target image” for the Icon that is more to your liking.

Since this is a portable application –  it will not show up in installed applications –  so, it’s best to install to a new folder that’s easily accessible.

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Win 7.

Download at: PortableApps

Why should you bother to erase files/folders permanently?

If you’re a typical computer user, you quite likely believe that the files you’ve deleted and sent to the recycle bin, are gone forever.

Not quite true however. When a file is deleted from your Hard Drive, what really gets deleted is the system link pointing towards the file, but not the file itself. Surprisingly, it is relatively easy to retrieve the deleted file using specialized file recovery software (often available as a free download), which takes advantage of shortcomings in the Windows operating systems.

In order to delete or shred files permanently – to protect your privacy and potentially your security – or, for any other reason for that matter, you need a program  that is capable of overwriting the file with a random series of binary data multiple times. That way, the actual content of the file has been overwritten and the possibilities of recovering such a shredded file, becomes mainly theoretical.

Pin Files, Folders and Web Sites, To Windows 7 Taskbar – Free Windows 7 Taskbar Items Pinner

Pinning applications to the Windows 7 Taskbar is generally very easy. Unfortunately, Windows 7 Taskbar was not designed with the ability to pin files,  folders, or web pages – but, a small freeware tool, Windows 7 Taskbar Items Pinner, enables you to overcome this limitation.

Download the executable file from the developer’s site (Kishan Bagaria – a 13 year old from India), then be sure to run the executable as “administrator” or, you’ll get the following –

Currently, I’m testing Windows 8, so in some respects, I’m working with a user interface which has been turned upside down. One casualty of Microsoft’s thinking is – a reversal on a quick and easy way to reach all installed programs.

Using Windows 7 Taskbar Items Pinner, I’ve partially overcome this limitation by choosing to add two new links to the Taskbar – “Computer” and “Program Files”.

A partial screen shot showing “Program Files” on the Taskbar.

Activating the Program Files icon, launches the new Windows Explorer (notice the “Ribbon”) at C: Program Files. Since I work primarily in the “Desktop” –  as opposed to Windows 8 Metro interface, I now have quick access to a listing of installed applications.

Custom items, including files and folders, or even a website can easily be added to the Taskbar – as the following series of screen shots (in which I have created a link to this website), indicate.

The new Taskbar shortcut to Tech Thoughts, is shown in the following screen capture.

If adding files, folders and web links to the Taskbar in Windows 7 is an option you’d like to exercise, then checkout the developers page for additional information on how to use this freebie effectively.

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Lock Your Computer’s Folders With Free BuduLock

If you’re on the hunt for a free privacy application designed to password protect folders on your drives, including USB drives, then you’ll be interested in BuduLock.

As a bonus, BuduLock will protect your PC from unauthorized USB flash drive access by implementing password protection – password protection which effectively disables USB operations on your system. Considering that malware infection by Flash Drives, is the second leading cause of system infection ….

This small application is driven by a self explanatory tabbed interface, which even less experienced users will find easy to follow. Simply choose the folder to be locked – enter a password – and you’re done.

Browsing to the selected folder in Windows Explorer reveals that the folder has been successfully locked, as indicated by the “lock” icon – shown in the following screen capture.

Unlocking the folder is the process in reverse. Launch the application – highlight the selected folder – enter your password – done.

Flash Drive Blocker:

When you disable the USB port, unauthorized users (those without the password), will be denied access.

Flash Drive Blocker Requirements:

UAC setting (User Account Control) feature must be disabled to use this feature. (Go to Control Panel > User Account > Turn UAC On or Off)

No password is required during the initial setup – (blank password). To setup and change your password, go to “Change Password”.

BuduLock will only disable the USB port for flash drive for that particular computer. It does not disable your flash drive.

System requirements: Windows Vista, Win 7.

Download at: Developer’s site.

The application is slightly more cumbersome to use than it needs to be – no access is available by way of the context menu. The addition of context menu access to the lock/unlock function is an improvement the developer should consider.

Other than this convenience issue, I found BuduLock very easy to use and perfect for locking folders on shared machines.

Last in a series:

Additional articles in this series on encryption and privacy:

Free AxCrypt – Encrypt, Compress, Decrypt in Windows Explorer

TrueCrypt – Free Encryption To The Max

EncryptOnClick – Encrypt and Decrypt Files and Folders With A Few Clicks

Free Secret Disk – Keep Your Secret Computer Files “Secret”

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Password Protect Folders (And More) With Free BuduLock

If you’re on the hunt for a free security application designed to password protect folders on your drives, including USB drives, then you’ll be interested in BuduLock.

As a bonus, BuduLock will protect your PC from unauthorized USB flash drive access by implementing password protection – password protection which effectively disables USB operations on your system. Considering that malware infection by Flash Drives, is the second leading cause of system infection ….

This small application is driven by a self explanatory tabbed interface, which even less experienced users will find easy to follow. Simply choose the folder to be locked – enter a password – and you’re done.

Browsing to the selected folder in Windows Explorer reveals that the folder has been successfully locked, as indicated by the “lock” icon – shown in the following screen capture.

Unlocking the folder is the process in reverse. Launch the application – highlight the selected folder – enter your password – done.

Flash Drive Blocker:

When you disable the USB port, unauthorized users (those without the password), will be denied access.

Requirements:

UAC setting (User Account Control) feature must be disabled to use this feature. (Go to Control Panel > User Account > Turn UAC On or Off)

No password is required during the initial setup – (blank password). To setup and change your password, go to “Change Password”.

BuduLock will only disable the USB port for flash drive for that particular computer. It does not disable your flash drive.

Personal note:

Disabling UAC, under any circumstances, is not something I would recommend. Based on this, I have not tested the Flash Drive Block feature.

System requirements: Windows Vista, Win 7.

Download at: Developer’s site.

The application is slightly more cumbersome to use than it needs to be – no access is available by way of the context menu. The addition of context menu access to the lock/unlock function is an improvement the developer should consider.

Other than this convenience issue, I found BuduLock very easy to use and perfect for locking folders on shared machines.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Bad CD or DVD? Recover the Data with Free CD Recovery Toolbox

How many coasters do you have that started life as critical backup CD/DVD’s, or the CD/DVD’s that you entrusted to store a lifetime of photo memories? Well if you’re like most of us, you may have more than one.

As a long term file storage medium, CD/DVD’s are, in effect, all-purpose, durable and, generally inexpensive. The difficulty in relying on this storage medium however is; they aren’t always as reliable as we sometimes seem to think. Hint: Check your backups from time to time, to ensure they can still be read.

Recently, I experienced CD failure when testing a system using a special boot CD called, “The Ultimate Boot CD”, which ironically failed to boot despite the decisiveness of its name.

There I was stuck with an unreadable CD; but being the “geeky” kind of guy that I am, and having been through similar situations in the past, I’ve learned to double up on all my diagnostic tools. Later, I confirmed that the unreadable CD had not been burned correctly – the deadly “bad burn”. So you’re not alone in turning what you may consider to be, unusable/unreadable CD/DVD’s into expensive coasters.

But there is a solution that can help you to recover damaged data that you may have considered unrecoverable. Stepping into the picture is CD Recovery Toolbox (last updated May 12, 2010), a free CD/DVD file recovery tool.

This small, free application was designed to recover damaged files on CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray disks. It can recover files that have been lost as a result of physical damage to the disk, (scratches, chips, and so on), or as a result of a bad or, inaccurate recording.

The program scans damaged CD and DVD disks and produces a listing of files and folders on the media, which it can recover. Be aware however, that depending on the degree of damage, there may be files that the application cannot recover.

In testing this product’s file recovery ability on a severely scratched and chipped disk, I’m happy to say, that it recovered 934 files out of a total of 936, that Windows could not read, and it did this in less than 2 minutes

Data recovery is generally a complex process, but even beginners will have an easy time with this application based on it’s step-by step wizard, which makes the use of the tool very simple and convenient.

Quick facts:

Recovers files/folders from CD and DVD’s

Recovers files larger than 4 GB

Detects lack of free space on the designated storage hard drive

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista.

Download at: Download.com

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Free Windows 7 in a Box – Access Win 7’s Features, Settings, Programs, and Tools Instantly

Drilling down through multiple layers of Windows menus to get to where you want to be, can be frustrating and time consuming.

Often, when I’m doing just that, I find myself muttering “there’s gotta be a better way” – and there is. Windows 7 in a Box, a very neat free system utility, has been designed to do away with this seemingly endless drilling.

Instead of hunting through countless menus and submenus, Windows 7 in a Box, provides easy access to hundreds of tools, functions, settings, folders and applications, available in Windows 7.

New and casual users, will love using this application. In one place, they will now have access to parts of the system that they might otherwise not have been aware of.

The interface is simple and intuitive, with little, if any, learning curve involved. The user simply activates a pull-down menu and selects the appropriate function.

The following graphics illustrate just how easy and functional Windows 7 in a Box can be:

Since Windows 7 in a Box does not require installation, it can easily be run from a USB drive as a portable application.

System requirements: Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit).

Note: While I haven’t tested this application in Vista, I understand that it does run perfectly well in that OS.

Download at: Download.com

A similar free application, designed specifically for Windows XP (Windows in a Box 2.0), is available.

Download at: Download.com

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Fix Disk Errors And More With Free Disk Heal

So you’ve finally managed to get rid of that nasty piece of malware that’s been causing you all sorts of grief – your anti-malware application has come to the rescue.

But now you’re left with another problem; a problem which can be equally as aggravating.

We’ve all heard the horror stories where the user was left to deal with the following problems after successfully removing an infection.

Drive inaccessibility

Task Manager inaccessibility

Folder Options inaccessibility

Registry Editor inaccessibility

Scary stuff to be sure, but you don’t have to be a Techno Geek to deal with these types of problems. Even though, for the casual or new user, a manual solution may be outside their technical abilities, there is a great newbie tool which offers a free solution.

Disk Heal is a free Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista utility that may be able to restore the condition of your Hard Drive, or a USB Flash Drive, after it has been being infected by a virus.

Disk Heal is a great free tool that has a host of additional capabilities, including recovering hidden files and performing system tweaks, The simple interface makes it easy to access these additional functions, with with just one click.

Quick facts:

Fixes disk problems

Fixes task manager inaccessibility

Fixes folder options inaccessibility

Fixes registry editor inaccessibility

Recovers hidden files and folders

Changes the default icon of any drive, external, internal, or a partition

Security and system tweaks

As you’re building your toolbox of system utilities, this is a good application to add. None of us are immune to a virus infection, and at some point you’ll be glad you had this little tool ready to go.

System requirements: Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista

Download at: Download.com

If you enjoyed this article, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

CD Recovery Toolbox – Recover Damaged CD/DVD Data

CD Recovery Toolbox, a free CD/DVD file recovery solution that can help you recover damaged data that you may have considered unrecoverable.

So how many coasters do you have that started life as critical backup CD/DVD’s, or the CD/DVD’s that you entrusted to store a lifetime of photo memories? Well if you’re like most of us, you may have more than one.

As a long term file storage medium, CD/DVD’s are, in effect, all-purpose, durable and, generally inexpensive. The difficulty in relying on this storage medium however is; they aren’t always as reliable as we sometimes seem to think.

Recently, I experienced CD failure when testing a system using a special boot CD called, “The Ultimate Boot CD”, which ironically failed to boot despite the decisiveness of its name.

There I was stuck with an unreadable CD; but being the “geeky” kind of guy that I am, and having been through similar situations in the past, I’ve learned to double up on all my diagnostic tools. Later, I confirmed that the unreadable CD had not been burned correctly – the deadly “bad burn”.

So you’re not alone in turning what you may consider to be, unusable/unreadable CD/DVD’s into expensive coasters. But there is a solution that can help you to recover damaged data that you may have considered unrecoverable. Stepping into the picture is CD Recovery Toolbox, a free CD/DVD file recovery tool.

This small, free application was designed to recover damaged files on CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray disks. It can recover files that have been lost as a result of physical damage to the disk, (scratches, chips, and so on), or as a result of a bad or inaccurate recording.

The program scans damaged CD and DVD disks and produces a listing of files and folders on the media, which it can recover. Be aware however, that depending on the degree of damage, there may be files that the application cannot recover.

In testing this product’s file recovery ability on a severely scratched and chipped disk, I’m happy to say that it recovered 934 files out of a total of 936, that Windows could not read, and it did this in less than 2 minutes

Data recovery is generally a complex process, but even beginners will have an easy time with this application based on it’s step-by step wizard, which makes the use of the tool very simple and convenient.

Quick facts:

Recovers files/folders from CD and DVD’s

Recovers files larger than 4 GB

Detects lack of free space on the designated storage hard drive

System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2K/XP/2K3/Vista

Download at: Download.com

Recover Damaged CD/DVD Data – Free CD Recovery Toolbox

So how many coasters do you have that started life as critical backup CD/DVD’s, or the CD/DVD’s that you entrusted to store a lifetime of photo memories? Well if you’re like most of us, you may have more than one.

As a long term file storage medium, CD/DVD’s are, in effect, all-purpose, durable and, generally inexpensive. The difficulty in relying on this storage medium however is; they aren’t always as reliable as we sometimes seem to think.

Recently, I experienced CD failure when testing a system using a special boot CD called, “The Ultimate Boot CD”, which ironically failed to boot despite the decisiveness of its name.

There I was stuck with an unreadable CD; but being the “geeky” kind of guy that I am, and having been through similar situations in the past, I’ve learned to double up on all my diagnostic tools. Later, I confirmed that the unreadable CD had not been burned correctly – the deadly “bad burn”.

So you’re not alone in turning what you may consider to be, unusable/unreadable CD/DVD’s into expensive coasters. But there is a solution that can help you to recover damaged data that you may have considered unrecoverable. Stepping into the picture is CD Recovery Toolbox, a free CD/DVD file recovery tool.

(Click pic for larger)

This small, free application was designed to recover damaged files on CD, DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-Ray disks. It can recover files that have been lost as a result of physical damage to the disk, (scratches, chips, and so on), or as a result of a bad or inaccurate recording.

The program scans damaged CD and DVD disks and produces a listing of files and folders on the media, which it can recover. Be aware however, that depending on the degree of damage, there may be files that the application cannot recover.

In testing this product’s file recovery ability on a severely scratched and chipped disk, I’m happy to say that it recovered 934 files out of a total of 936, that Windows could not read, and it did this in less than 2 minutes

Data recovery is generally a complex process, but even beginners will have an easy time with this application based on it’s step-by step wizard, which makes the use of the tool very simple and convenient.

I have read a number of unrealistic complaints from some users, who have noted this application is “slow” at recovery. Instead of being thankful that a free application such as this can in fact recover what would normally be unrecoverable, and perhaps irreplaceable data, they whine and complain. Here’s some advice for those users – give your head a shake, and learn to be thankful!

Quick facts:

Recovers files/folders from CD and DVD’s

Recovers files larger than 4 GB

Detects lack of free space on the designated storage hard drive

System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2K/XP/2K3/Vista

Download at: Download.com

Repair Drives, Files, Folders with Free Disk Heal

While it’s true that most anti-malware applications will remove an executable malware file from your system, depending on the infection, it is not uncommon that it will be unable to reverse the damage already done.

In many cases the user will be left to deal with the following problems.

Drive inaccessibility

Task Manager inaccessibility

Folder Options inaccessibility

Registry Editor inaccessibility

It’s not necessary to be a Techno Geek to deal with these types of problems; there are a number of manual methods to resolve these issues. But for the casual or new computer user, the solution may be outside their technical abilities. Fortunately, there is a free solution that is new user friendly.

Disk Heal is a free Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista utility that may be able to restore the condition of your Hard Drive, or a USB Flash Drive, after it has been being infected by a virus.

This free application is a very useful tool that has a host of additional capabilities, including recovering hidden files and performing system tweaks; all can be accessed with just one click.

Quick facts:

Fixes disk problems

Fixes task manager inaccessibility

Fixes folder options inaccessibility

Fixes registry editor inaccessibility

Recovers hidden files and folders

Changes the default icon of any drive, external, internal, or a partition

Security and system tweaks

As you’re building your toolbox of system utilities, this is a good application to add. None of us are immune to a virus infection, and at some point you’ll be glad you had this little tool ready to go.

Download at: Download.com