Ever had problems ejecting a USB device – getting an errror like “Unable to stop….”?
Well this page claim to have a utility that can assist you with this issue plus a whole lot more (like renaming USB devices, ejecting USB via command line and hot-key eject)… Sounds very promising..
I found this by visiting an old post here on my site, a post about a file unlocking utility.
Now this fall under the category, easy solutions to complex problems…
I recently had to remove about 150 computer objects from a MOM 2005 console, it was not possible to select all and choose remove so you had to right click each and every one of them – click “remove” and then answer “Yes” to the “Are you sure….” dialog… Now imagine how long this would take to do manually!? Well you could probably do some scripting that would solve the problem – however that would require some research to find, test and then implement.. but then it struck me, a flashback from back in Windows 3.1 where you had a macro recorder, this macro recorder would allow you to record keyboard and mouse actions and then play it back as many times as you would like (I remember making a macro sending emails and thus spamming some of my fellow students, great fun at the time), now someone must have made a freeware tool that will do this under modern versions of Windows, and sure enough – “Do it again” to the rescue… “Do it Again” will allow you to make macros and play them back as many times as you’d like, it’s free and easy to use..
1. Get the util from here; http://www.spacetornado.com/DoItAgain/
2. Install it
3. Start “Do it again” and click “create new task” and perform the task you want repeated.
4. Press “Scroll lock” (the button) once you are done with your task.
5. Name the macro in “Do it again” (a dialog box will pop up).
6. Under options set the number of times you want the task to repeat
7. Double click the macro you just created
8. Sit back in amazement and watch someone else making all the hard work for you, now it will still take time but you can sit back and drink coffee while it does.. NICE.. a simple solution to a time consuming problem…
UPDATE;
Sadly I found out this does NOT work on Vista/Win7 
– bummer, however I guess there will be some other util out there that will…
UPDATE2;
I just found a util “Windows Macro Recorder” that claims to work on all windows versions, same concept as the above;
http://www.freelabs.info/MacroRecorder.aspx
http://www.sparkleshare.org/ is a new project on the Internet inspired by Dropbox (a clever fileshareing/collaboration and file syncronising util that uses cloud based storage), SparkleShares force is that it supposodly will be free/open source and you can thus setup your own servers, sounds like something to make a mantal note of..
The first version will be in Linux but should be followed by a windows version, presently no version is publicly available though (as it’s very early in the program, announced June 10th 2010).
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/sparkleshare-aims-to-better-dropbox.html
Soluto offers to minimize your boot time, even with Windows 7 boot time is time wasted and a spark for frustration but this utility states it can cut a significant portion of your boot time.
http://www.soluto.com/
They even call it “Anti-Fustration software” 
I have not tested it yet, but it does sound promising.
Hopefully you have your Windows machine set to receive updates automatically? But do you ever check that updates are actually downloaded, and installed and what about third party software?
Well, this tip is an oldie, but still quite good and worth a mention;
Secunia (a very skilled security company) offer several products for evaluating your Software readiness (ranging from corporate products to free online personal scanners).
Check it out at (at the very least do an online scan);
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/
CNet also offers a new product called TechTracker which more or less does the same thing;
http://www.cnet.com/techtracker/?tag=mncol;pm
I actually thought I had written this post long ago, but it would seem it somehow slipped my mind.
Anyhow, have you ever found yourself running out of diskspace – wandering what the h… is eating up all your diskspace… most have and it can be a complex matter to find that strange .zip or .log file (or whatnot file) that is floating around somewhere and taking up hundreds if not thousands of megabytes.
The solution is a cool freeware util Windirstat that will convert your drives filestructure to a graphical display, here you can just click on the large objects and see which file it is and thus quickly find those large files that is taking up space..
Sure there are other util’s like this, some may even be better I don’t know – but this one is simple, small, free and works..
http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/
a fairly good alternative is;
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
this works much the same way just with a pie chart instead, and as I recall requires java installed.
Long ago I wrote about www.jingproject.com (a free and cool screen capture software), but recently I was made aware of a “competitive” product called PicPick which is equally free and cool.
Compared the two products offer some advantages over each other;
Jing: Upload directly to screencast, video capture possibility and also a layered approach (when adding text and arrows onto captures).
PicPick: Lots of different capture modes (eg. freehand) and a build-in graphics editor in which you will work with your capture (ala Paint from windows).
Both:Hotkey support (pipick even separate hotkeys for the different capture modes), option to add both text and arrows to the capture to underline your point.
Which is better is hard to say – I guess it depends on what kind of captures you do the most.. A merge of the two products would be ever so cool
I think PicPick offer some great options when talking capture modes and also the build in editor is nice, it is however annoying that the editing is not layered (if you add an arrow it is added into the graphics and cant thus be changed later as opposed to Jing). Maybe you will just have to have both 
Get PicPick free here; http://www.picpick.org/home
Get Jing free here; www.jingproject.com
Want to ‘cache’ google maps for offline viewing?
Check this out;
Gmap catcher
Read more here and here
Download it here; http://code.google.com/p/gmapcatcher/
(Screenshot is from an older version than the current 4.9)
Yet another free partitioning CD (why in the world pay for Partition Magic), this CD will let you boot from it and resize your partitions and much more (free).
As primary a Windows admin I get a bit discouraged by products like Nagios – although it’s definitely a cool product installing it seem complex and with little knowledge on Linux maintaining it even more so.
So are there any Windows (free) alternatives out there?
Yes, and propably more than one, however is there any open source/free versions among these?
I found two;
http://opennms.org/wiki/Installation:Windows
It claim to run on windows and have basic capabilities, I have not looked into details so I can’t say just how deep it goes (Nagius supports SNMP and very detailed monitoring, OpenNMS at a glance seem more like superficial monitoring). Anyway, it’s free and may just be enough for you, so take a look at it.
Demo available at;
http://demo.opennms.org/opennms/index.jsp
user and password is both “demo”
http://www.spiceworks.com
I actually tested this once (a previous version), it is quite fine for smaller sites (and seem more extensive than OpenNMS), but when it come to wan connected sites it seem a bit heavy (works without agents installed). Then again, it’s free and this one is quite easy to setup and manage.
Yet other alternatives (Non windows though) is;
http://www.zenoss.com/
http://www.zabbix.com/
And this one that seem commercial;
http://www.groundworkopensource.com/
