Display Driver Uninstaller
Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) is something that every desktop professionals should have mainly on computers that may have Graphics cards that are required for the job such as Nvidia or even AMD cards. You will find that every so often some driver updates causes a problem and this is a very good tool to uninstall the driver completely. I will say this is open sourced and is very good for every day support when you might need to use this little utility for just those occasions. You will find this free tool will be used more and more and you can even keep it on a USB drive as a way to use it offline when you need to do use it. It’s very small and won’t need a big USB drive but this is only one of the few that you might have available to use on your USB drive.
Portable Apps
Portable Apps has so many portable applications that it would be hard to talk about all them. However there are several that I will talk about that you can install on the USB drive. Depending on the size of your USB portable drive you have will depend on what you might want to install on the drive. However if you have a big enough USB drive, you could in theory install all available applications from Portable Apps and then you would be set.
- Revo Uninstaller Portable — Great for those pesky programs that might not uninstall all the way or when something goes wrong with uninstalling programs.
- HackthisPortable — Good for looking for viruses, and Trojans that might be on the system and gives you a run down on what might be running on any given system.
- McAffeeStingerPortable and Kaserpky Task killer — These are great apps for programs that you have issues with when they want to keep running even when you need them to not be loaded or running on a system.
- CPUZPortable and GPUZPortable — great ways to find out even more about finding out what drivers you might need for GPU and looking at what type of CPU might be on any given system. In case you needed to know.
- Microsoft Safty Scanner — Great portable app that you can use on any Windows system in case you might have a Virus infection and is being blocked from being download or run locally.
- CCleanderPortable — Another great applications to use to clean the registry and other places in Windows that might be causing problems and helps fix some of the registry problems you might have.
As you can see there are several portable apps you can install on any given USB drive and have ready at moments notice if you ever need it. So this is great tool that you can use for what ever you might come your way.
WinDirStat
WinDirStat is something that helps me find what might be hogging a system drive. It is great and showing graphically what could be taking up the space of a hard drive. It is portable and can be put on USB also but can also be download and used for many different reason but mostly when you need to find out why the hard drive is so full and how what you can delete to create space. So this is something most Desktop Support people will use at one time or another. I have used this several times in the past to find files that can be deleted, you just have to be careful what you delete and never touch anything in the Windows Directory or Program Files directory unless you want the system no run properly when you reboot.
These are what I have on my USB just in case I need them but these are only a few of them because there are even more tools that I use when I need them however this would start you on the right to having a powerful USB drive when you might need it. Do you have a favorite tool that you want to let everyone else know about? Why not leave a comment and tell people about it.
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Thank you for your post the importance of having essential portable applications on a USB drive for desktop professionals, particularly for graphics cards and system maintenance. Sorry to hear of your recent layoff. With your knowledge I’m sure you’ll find something! I was wondering, have you ever considered doing a gaming blog? I recently got into Minecraft and I want to know how to download mods safely. I’m particularly interested in 18+ mods but the sites I’ve looked at that host them don’t seem to be safe.
Bernard, You can download good mods from several different sites for Minecraft. I’ve not see any problems installing the mods but My current recommendations is to keep with the ones who have been used a lot and people recommending them. Once you find the mods that you like just keep watch and verify with your virus scanner to make sure there isn’t a malicious intent in the java script. Other than that I haven’t see any problems using mods but I rarely use them other than a few.