CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.

CPU

• Name and number.

• Core stepping and process.

• Package.

• Core voltage.

• Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier.

• Supported instructions sets.

• Cache information.

Mainboard

• Vendor, model and revision.

• BIOS model and date.

• Chipset (northbridge and southbridge) and sensor.

• Graphic interface.

Memory

• Frequency and timings.

• Module(s) specification using SPD (Serial Presence Detect) : vendor, serial number, timings table.

System

• Windows and DirectX version.

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SpeedFan allows you to have a deeper view of the status of your computer. Almost every computer includes support for hardware monitoring. Accessing digital temperature sensors is really useful. If you are trying to figure out why your pc hangs when under heavy load or after some hours of usage, SpeedFan might help you to find the real cause.

Very often it is a poor power supply, or an improperly installed heatsink that lead to behaviours that we tend to associate with errors from the operating system, but that are not. SpeedFan automatically searches your computer for interesting chips: the hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can expose voltages, fan speeds and temperatures.

On rare occasions, the BIOS doesn’t activate such features. SpeedFan tries to enable them as long as this is a safe thing to do. Not only the motherboard is searched, but also some video cards and almost every recent hard disk.

SpeedFan can access status info from EIDE, SATA and even SCSI drives, showing, in a consistent way, internal data that can be used to diagnose current and future hard disk failures. This is known as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is a hardware monitor software that can access digital temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise.

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Core Temp is a compact, no fuss, small footprint program to monitor CPU temperature.

The uniqueness of it is that it shows the temperature of each individual core in a each processor in your system! You can see in real time how the CPU temperature varies when you load your CPU. It’s also completely motherboard independant.

Intel and AMD recently published detailed, public information about the “DTS” (Digital Thermal Sensor), which provides much higher accuracy and more relevant temperature reading than the standard thermal diode sensors do. This feature is supported on all Intel Core and Core 2 based processors as well as the whole AMD’s Athlon64 line of CPUs.

Core Temp also has a logging feature, allowing a user to easily record the temperature of his processor(s) over any period of time, then the data can be easily transfered into an excel datasheet for easy graphing.

Core Temp works on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (both 32bit and 64bit versions).

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HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following features:

• Benchmark: measures the raw performance

• Transfer Rate

• Access Time

• CPU Usage

• Burst Rate

• Hard Disk information which includes firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode

• Hard Disk Health

• S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)

• Temperature

• Power On Time

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One of the limitations of the Windows NT/2000 defragmentation interface is that it is not possible to defragment files that are open for exclusive access. Thus, standard defragmentation programs can neither show you how fragmented your paging files or Registry hives are, nor defragment them. Paging and Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation related to file fragmentation in a system.

PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them. In addition, it defragments event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files (where system memory is saved when you hibernate a laptop).

PageDefrag works on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Server 2003.

Defraggler differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply launch Defraggler, select the file or folder and defragment it in just a few seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!

Features:

• Defrag Individual Files

Most defragmentation tools only let you defrag the whole drive. Defraggler gives you the power to select individual files and folders to defrag. So you can get the job done in seconds, rather than waiting for the whole drive to complete. Of course if you want to defrag the whole drive Defraggler will let you do that too.

• Compact and Portable

Defraggler was written in the same compact architecture as other Piriform products (CCleaner and Recuva). This results in a compact single EXE application, which can be copied to a thumbdrive and then used whenever you need it, without a complex installation process. The EXE itself is less than 1MB!

• Vista Support

Defraggler supports all OSs released since Windows 2000, this includes Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista. Although 64-bit support is not included in this version, we are working on compatibility, so it will be available soon! Additionally Defraggler supports both NTFS and FAT32 file systems.

• Locate Files on the Drive

After analysis Defraggler lists all the fragmented files on the drive. Selecting one or many will highlight their location on the disk. Allowing you to visually see the location of files on the disk.

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CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

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vLite is a tool for customizing the Windows Vista installation before actually installing it.

Features:

• hotfix, language pack and driver integration

• component removal

• unattended setup

• tweaks

• split/merge Vista installation CDs

• create ISO and burn bootable CD/DVD

Windows Vista from Microsoft takes a lot of resources, we all know that. vLite provides you with an easy removal of the unwanted components in order to make Vista run faster and to your liking.

This tool doesn’t use any kind of hacking, all files and registry entries are protected as they would be if you install the unedited version only with the changes you select.

It configures the installation directly before the installation, meaning you’ll have to remake the ISO and reinstall it. This method is much cleaner, not to mention easier and more logical than doing it after installation on every reinstall.

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