SHAREWARE & FREEWARE    ESSENTIAL UTILITIES
Motherboard Monitor Motherboard Monitor tracks CPU and system temperature plus fan speed and can pop up or transmit an alert if the CPU starts to overheat or a fan fails. Very useful if you build your own PC; absolutely essential if you overclock. Monitor supports a vast range of motherboards and sensors, so do refer to the guide to choosing correct sensors on the Motherboard Monitor home page. It does take a little getting used to but is by far the best of its kind and infinitely more versatile than the monitor that ships with VIA motherboards.

WCPUID WCPUID might seem a waste of time since it only claims to report the CPU clock speed but the current version 3.0, which is available on the author's website, will report everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about your CPU and its chipset. If you're overclocking, or need to confirm the exact version of your motherboard chipset before installing drivers, or you're buying a PC and want to run a quick check to see what's actually inside the box, WCPUID is your friend and, unlike most similar utilities, it fits on a floppy disk.

BIOS The eponymous BIOS program displays information about your BIOS, including BIOS extensions and beep codes; lets you find BIOS passwords (Award and AMI) and discover Award BIOS universal passwords. In addition, this DOS-based command-line utility can switch the first and second-level caches on or off, and turn off your PC (requires APM 1.2 or later). It can also save your BIOS settings to disk and restore them, though this feature seems to be unreliable. A Windows shell version of the program, Win Bios, is also available.

Sisoft Sandra Sandra is a system analysis and troubleshooting utility. It packs in a huge range of modules, covering everything from CPU and BIOS analysis to OpenGL and DirectX. In every case, Sandra reports valuable performance data, reveals what features are or are not supported, and even offers tips on tweaks you can make to improve the system. The tests are demanding, and there is a burn-in feature that runs them continuously for deliberately stressing a new or suspect system. Sandra is the overclocker's friend, providing evidence for improvements gained, and is ideal for any system builder who wants to check and optimise performance.

Ad Aware Adware is software financed by banner adverts embedded in the application: periodically, these adverts are replaced by a new set when you connect to the Internet. Its critics call it 'spyware', claiming that such products transmit details of the user's browsing habits back to base surreptitiously, and in some cases this information gathering continues after the original Adware host has been uninstalled. You can make up your own mind on the pros and cons, but Lavasoft's Ad Aware scans your Registry and hard drives for known spyware and lets you remove it safely.

Zonealarm Zonealarm improves the security of Internet-connected Windows PCs. It closes some of the more glaring holes in Windows security, Net Bios for instance, which many Windows users don't even know about. It also serves as a deterrent to people who try to break into your PC from the Internet and, most usefully, stops software, such as Trojans, that you may inadvertently have installed, making outgoing calls from your computer. ZoneAlarm supports modem, ISDN, cable and DSL connections. It works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP, and there's a paid-for version, Zonealarm Pro, that you'll need if you use your PC as a gateway.

Tweak UI A truly essential utility for Windows; this installs itself as an extra icon in the Control Panel. From there, it lets you customise 'unreachable' parts of the interface, and a lot more besides. You can hide Desktop icons, Control Panel items, and disk drives from prying eyes; change menu speeds and animation; change the appearance of shortcuts; and clear history lists such as Recent Documents. Tweak UI also has a 'Repair' feature that will rebuild damaged icons, reinstate the standard file associations and restore the special properties of folders such as Fonts and Temporary Internet Files.

RegCleaner Regcleaner prunes the Windows Registry with a twist, seeking out the parts other Registry cleaners like Microsoft Regclean don't reach. Regcleaner displays a list of all the programs referenced in the Registry and allows you to delete their Registry entries. Sounds simple but is enormously useful if you frequently install shareware utilities and games demos. These don't always uninstall cleanly and have been known to leave detritus in the Registry that gradually builds up like limescale in a kettle, slowing down Registry access. This is an essential tool for all Windows users. It is very easy to use but needs to be employed with utmost care.

RegMon Regmon uniquely offers realtime monitoring of the Windows Registry. It's especially useful for fixing Windows applications that won't install or run properly unless the user logs on as administrator. Typically afflicting older applications that are not fully Windows 2000-compliant, they refuse to run under standard user logins because they are denied access to Registry keys reserved for administrator access. Because the keys are only accessed when the application runs, Regmon's realtime monitoring of the Registry is often the only way to identify the keys that need to be given user rights so that everyone can run the application.

Win 9x/Me

NT/2K/XP

XP 64bit
Xteq X-Setup X-Setup is Tweak UI on steroids. Running in two modes, X-Setup lets you easily change hundreds of hidden settings ? not only for Windows, but also for a multitude of popular programs and games. The program's secret is its plug-in modularity, which provides an Explorer-like tree display so that you can navigate to the settings you want to change. In Wizard mode, you can pick a topic of interest from the menu and X-Setup runs the appropriate wizard to help you change the settings in a step-by-step process. You can even change the colours of the 'Blue Screen of Death'. It is also a great system tune-up tool and it can help to speed up and optimise any Windows 32bit-based PC. In addition, because software and hardware change so quickly, X-Setup can be updated with new plug-ins to keep it up to date.