System - Installation/Configuration (63)

Windows System Control Center (WSCC) allows you to install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. The program either works as an interface or as downloader. The program can work with both utilities suites downloaded or can dynamically grab and run the programs via a web connection. The included Update Manager can check for newer versions of the utilities already installed and can download and install the missing items.

Works with Windows Sysinternals and NirSoft Utilities suites, but also highlights Windows' own utilities.

Note: The setup packages are downloaded from the author's website.

HiBit Uninstaller is a free software to uninstall any Programs & Microsoft Store apps on your Windows PC. It also offers others like an advanced browser extension manager, junk cleaner, registry cleaner, process and startup manager, context menu manager, etc.

Wise Program Uninstaller allows the removal of installed software and associated files, extras and other information default installers often leave behind. The program can search for more leftovers after an uninstall or force uninstall stubborn data that stays behind. The program can repair installs and is fully compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit applications.

Alternatively, a PortableApps.com version is also available.

FileTypesMan is an alternative to the 'File Types' tab in the 'Folder Options' of Windows. It displays the list of all file extensions and types registered on your computer. For each file type, the following information is displayed: Type Name, Description, MIME Type, Perceived Type, Flags, Browser Flags and more. FileTypesMan also allows you to easily edit the properties and flags of each file type, as well as it allows you to add, edit and remove actions in a file type.

Bulk Crap Uninstaller (BCUninstaller) allows users to uninstall programs and clean lingering data from the file system and Windows registry. The program can remove Windows Store apps, batch remove multiple programs and handle programs that don't provide uninstallers. The program can also detect damaged or missing uninstallers, quiet uninstall options, uninstall lists, startup managers, verification of uninstaller certificates and more.

Autoruns shows programs that run during system bootup or login, as well as entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility.

A 64-bit version is available (within the folder).

Alternatively, Autoruns Portable is stealth and will only show the EULA once.

DevManView is an alternative to the standard Windows Device Manager. It displays all devices and their properties in a flat table, instead of a hierarchical treeview. In addition to displaying the devices of your local computer, DevManView also lets you view the device list of another computer on your network, as long as you have administrator access rights to that computer.

DevManView can also load the devices list from external instance of Windows and disable unwanted devices. This feature can be useful if you have trouble starting Windows on a particular machine and you need to disable a problematic device.

Revo Uninstaller Free helps you remove any unwanted application installed on your computer. Additional clean-up tools include an auto-start manager, Windows tools manager, junk files cleaner, browsers history cleaner, office history cleaner, Windows history cleaner, unrecoverable delete tool and evidence remover.

UninstallView collects information about all programs installed on your system and displays the details of the installed programs in one table. You can use it to get installed programs information for your local system, for remote computer on your network and for external hard-drive plugged to your computer. It also allows you to easily uninstall a software on your local computer and remote computer (including quiet uninstall if the installer supports it).

InstalledAppView displays the details of apps installed on your system, remote computer on your network, or from external disk plugged to your computer. For every app, the program name, version, registry name/modified time, installation folder, install folder owner, and uninstall command are all visible.

The program allows viewing of the XML files (AppxManifest.xml and AppxBlockMap.xml) and can uninstall apps, run quiet uninstalls (no user intervention), open the install folder of the app, and more.

WinUpdatesView displays the history of Windows updates on your system. It can load the Windows updates history from your local system, using API, and it can also read and parse the Windows updates database file (DataStore.edb) from external drive or from remote computer on your network.

For every Windows update history record, WinUpdatesView displays the following fields: Title, Description, Install Date, Update Operation (Install, Uninstall, Not Started, In Progress), Operation Result (Succeeded, Succeeded With Errors, Failed, Aborted), Category, Information URL, Support URL, Uninstall Notes, Client Application ID, Service ID, Update ID, Revision Number, Unmapped Result Code, Server Selection, hResult.

Driver Magician Lite identifies all the hardware in your system, extracts the associated drivers and backs them up to a location of your choice. Later, when you need to reinstall/upgrade Windows, you can restore all the saved drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands. This is especially useful if you inherited an old machine or bought a white box system and did not receive all the original driver discs.

ShellExView displays the details of shell extensions installed on your machine and allows you to easily enable/disable each shell extension. ShellExView comes in handy for solving problems caused by third party shell extensions.

ShellMenuView is a small utility that display the list of static menu items that appeared in the context menu when you right-click a file/folder on Windows Explorer and allows you to easily disable unwanted menu items.

Rapid Environment Editor (RapidEE) is an environment variables editor. It includes an easy to use GUI and replaces the small and inconvenient Windows edit box, located in the System Information section.

"Environment variables are specially named string aliases for basic system properties. They contain information such as drive, path, or file name. They control the behavior of various programs. For example, the TEMP environment variable specifies the location in which programs place temporary files." (source)

Types allows you to customize how Windows handles different file types. Includes changing program associations, icons, context menus and other settings.

Supports many world languages.

MyUninstaller is an alternative utility to the standard Add/Remove Software control panel applet. It displays the list of all installed application, and allows you to uninstall an application, delete an uninstall entry, and save the list of all installed applications into a text file or HTML file. It also provides additional information for most installed applications that the standard applet does not display: product name, company, version, uninstall string, installation folder etc.

PC Decrapifier helps you remove many of the common trialware and crapware found installed by default on many of the PCs from big name OEMs. Toolbars, anti-virus and other trials, and many other tools that make money for the laptop makers, but just take up space on your computer without providing value. The program lets you check off items to be removed.

Note: this program has been discontinued.

DeviceIOView allows you to watch the data transfer between a software or service and a device driver (DeviceIoControl calls). For each call to a device driver, the following information is displayed: Handle, Control Code, number of input bytes, number of output bytes, the name of the device handle, and all the input/output bytes, displayed as Hex dump.

Context Menu Editor can view and delete links to programs present in folders or Internet Explorer right-click menu. This is useful for programs you don't use or tools that didn't ask to be added to the context menu.

Note that menu links cannot be undone and may require a reinstall to replace.

Note: Main website offline -- linking to archive.org mirror.

xpy provides a variety of helpful tweaks to your system for security, speed, privacy, and more. In addition to various anti-spyware features, it can disable common security threats (RPC/DCOM, LMHash), increase performance, usability, and tweak Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

Note: The program doesn't come with an explanation of each setting change so users not familiar with Windows should proceed with caution.

ZipInstaller installs and uninstalls applications and utilities that do not provide an internal installation program. It automatically extracts all files from the Zip file, copies them to the destination folder you select, creates shortcuts in the start menu and in your desktop, and adds an uninstall module to allow you to automatically remove the software in the future.

Universal Silent Switch Finder attempts to find often undocumented program switches that enable a "silent" or no-user-action software install. This is useful for administrators installing software remotely or users who want to skip the process of installation.

Note: Softpedia reports that the program is better with .MSI files than .EXE installation files.

WhatInStartup displays the list of all applications that are loaded automatically when Windows starts up. It allows you to easily disable or delete unwanted programs that runs in your Windows startup. You can use it on your currently running instance of Windows, as well as you can use it on external instance of Windows in another drive. Additionally, the program will "ban" programs from re-adding themselves to startup.

ExtMan (extension manager) manages the behavior of your computer when you launch or double-click on a file. This lets you open a text file in Notepad or you program of choice

The software can view, edit, create, and remove actions, as well as change the associated icons. You can also control if the file extension will be hidden/shown by default and whether a confirmation will be required to open it after download.

You can also choose the default action when multiple options available, the others appearing when you right-click and choose "Open With".

Backups of the registry entries to create these changes are available for one or multiple file extensions.

NOTE: Website is offline, linking to a user-provided mirror.

KuShellExtension is an extension that adds custom entries into context menu (a.k.a. shell menu) in some applications like Windows Explorer. The program is highly configurable by a simple configuration file in XML format. It can generate submenus and display icons, which cannot be done by modifying registry.

Supports both x86 and x64 systems

ZSoft Uninstaller is a unique program removal program that does pre and post-install system analysis to provide a way to remove all changes made by an installed program. This is useful over provided uninstall tools or programs that search for traces left behind afterwards, although the program can run a search cleanup if you didn't do a pre-install check.

Additional system-cleaning tools include a temporary and empty folders cleaner, as well as a system start-up manager.

Languages: Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and more.

AutoRun Settings gives easy access to the basic Windows AutoRun settings.

JavaRa removes old and redundant versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from your machine. Simply select "Check for Updates" or "Remove Older Version" to begin.

Note: The program is no longer maintained as of March 2011. Future JREs from Oracle may not be cleaned with this program. (Thanks to Emka)

ActiveXHelper allows you to view essential information about ActiveX components installed on your computer. You can view the entire and very large list of ActiveX components by loading it from the registry key (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID) or alternatively display only the ActiveX components that you specify.

In addition, you can temporarily disable specific ActiveX components so they cannot be used by any software until you enable them again.

Reprofiler offers a quick and easy way to see which profile is associated with which user. If a problem is evident, it then provides an intuitive and straightforward means of correcting the profile ownership.

xp-AntiSpy is allows you to easily enable/disable usually unnecessary or undesirable Windows features (e.g. Messenger, Media Player's automatic codec download, language bar (ctfmon.exe), etc.). As the name suggests, the program was originally focused on preventing privacy-sensitive elements, but has expanded to many others, including enabling hidden features like a command-line prompt in context menu and an increase in the maximum number of half-opened TCP connections (helpful for P2P applications).

IECompo displays the list of Internet Explorer components that are installed on your computer.

Vispa attempts to secure your Windows system and protect your privacy. In addition to anti-spyware features, it disables common security threats (RPC/DCOM, LMHash), increases your Windows performance, and tweaks Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

Note: Vispa is not being developed any longer. It has merged into xpy and the program will determine which settings are suitable for the target OS.

SMART (Service Management And RealEasy Tweaking) Utility helps with automating the process of tweaking the Windows 7 services using the suggested configurations provided by BlackVipers.

Note: It is always recommended to create a System Restore Point before tweaking your system. Also, this is not a hard drive testing tool unlike other "SMART" tools.

UserAssistView decrypt and displays the list of all UserAssist entries stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist key in the Registry. The UserAssist key contains information about the exe files and links that you open frequently.

Double Driver lets you view all the drivers installed on your system and backup, restore, save, or print all chosen drivers. It analyzes your system and lists the most important driver details such as version, date, provider, etc and offers you the chance to update to the latest version.

DriveBackup is a fast and simple tool to backup, restoration, and removal hardware drivers. Includes command line options, automatic restoration from CD\DVD and path formatting. DriverBackup! includes also an interactive command line builder.

v.1.0.3 seems to be the last release that does not require the dotNET 2.0 framework.

Gunners File Type Editor allows you to you to create/modify various properties for file extensions for the currently logged in user.

Application Path Editor is able to add, edit and delete Application Paths in a quick and safe way, so you can decide what commands Windows will recognize and the program they execute. This allows you to put fewer shortcuts on your desktop and run commands from the Run dialog.

Windows 7 users should use Windows Key + R.

WebVersions keeps your software up to date by adding applications to the database and checking for updates.

XP-Config is an easy-to-use Windows XP configuration tool, useful to set security, performance, appearance and device behavior options.

Note: The application starts in German, but you can immediately focus the "Sprache / Language" option in the window.

OpenWithView is a small utility that displays the list of all available applications in the 'Open With' dialog-box of Windows, and allows you to easily disable/enable the applications in the list.

This utility works under Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, and Windows Vista. In earlier versions of Windows, OpenWithView will display the list of 'Open With' window entries, but disable/enable feature won't work.

Starter allows you to view and manage all the programs that are started automatically at system startup. You can temporarily disable selected entries, edit them, create new, or delete them permanently. It also lists all running processes with the ability to view extended process information such as used DLLs, memory usage, thread count, priorities etc. You can terminate selected processes or services.

Languages: Supports 22 including French, German, Italiano, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian,

URLProtocolView is a simple utility that displays all URL protocols (for example: ftp:, telnet:, mailto:) that are currently installed on your system. For each URL protocol, the following information is displayed: The protocol name, the protocol description, the command-line that is executed when you type or click the URL, the product name, and the company name. This utility also allows you to easily enable/disable the URL protocols.

XPredit lets you easily tweak certain useful registry values such as disabling autorun and ballooon tips, speeding up the start menu, hiding recent documents display, minimizing startup and shutdown times etc.

Note: Links broken ... linking to Softpedia.

FastExplorer allows you to customize and manage context menus of file objects displayed in Windows Explorer. You can create new menu items, submenus, dividers etc. as well as specify menu bitmaps and hint text. You can also manage existing menu items added by other programs, or detect/fix orphaned entries in the Windows registry.

Note: Website offline, linking to Softpedia

From the maker of Malwarebytes Anti Malware, StartUpLite helps you disable or remove all known unnecessary startup entries from your machine.

Functional on 64-bit.

Autostart and Process Viewer helps you control which applications automatically start with Windows, and shows which processes are running on your computer. When left running in the system tray, it also helps you find out which processes and autostart entries are new so that you can remove suspicious entries.