Tag: Portable Apps

The Best 3 Free Tools for Desktop Support Professionals

Paul2 Replies

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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5 portable Apps that will save your time on your computer!

Paul
Picture by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Give it a chance

So you have a client who has some computer problems, and you don’t know what to do?  I am here to help you with that problem.  It can’t be easy for some to know exactly what you might need for those uncertain times.   There are multitude of problems that you’ll see in your computer technician job that will need to be resolved.   Here is a little bit of a list of apps that I use on a daily or weekly process to repair and upgrade systems.  Some of these will help me fix problems or even problem solve the answer.

Sysinternals Suite

Process Explorer

This bag of applications brought to you by Microsoft is the cream of the crop.   If you haven’t downloaded the who suite of tools from sysinternals.  You really should  do it now.   I really like the process monitor and process monitoring tools to help me see what might be wrong with a system.   It’s got a whole lot of apps to use when you need to either kill an app.   I could go on and on about this pack of apps from Microsoft but it is definitely a grab bag for me.  This is something that I have on my USB for when I might need it.

CloneZilla

Clonzilla Live CD/USB

Another great app that you can load on your USB and use it when you need to copy partitions or even whole drives from one drive to another.   It is a free utility that you can use on any system.  You’ll just need to create a bootable USB.   I use the app call YUMI to create a multiboot usb and put all my favorite and important ISO on the USB for when I need them.

Portable Apps

Portable Apps

This is another one that I put on my USB just to be cautious and know that I don’t have to use anything on a system that I might not trust. They’ve got a slew of apps that you can use for everything that you might need. What I like about portable apps is they even have antivirus and password generators. They have a lot of what I will use from time to time because they just make it easy to scan an infected system from my usb without having to load the antivirus before boot. They have some great tools all around and You should check them out.

RevoUninstaller Portable

This is great utility to remove all the crap that any system that you buy from a store or even from Amazon will be removed without much effort from you.  You can run this off a USB or even install it and remove all the stuff that gets loaded on from the Acer, Dell, or other OEMS.   It helps me out really well because I have seen clients systems speed up by removing all the annoying programs that aren’t even being used.

Windows Offline update (WSUS)

Windows offline Update (WSUS)

Let’s face it, if your client hasn’t updated their system for quite some time or the system in question doesn’t have a way to update because of no internet this is the best solution for you.   Download the updates and put it on a USB.   Most of the time, it will be a good around 20gb or 30gb depending on which windows updates you get from Windows 7 to Windows 10, you will have each one being like 3gb or 4gb a piece.   It actually helps me when it comes to updating a client’s computer without having to wait for it to download the updates.   I can just update and reboot.  This has been a great time saver for me when it comes to being a computer technician.

What’s your favorite portable app or even just an app that you use on a regular basis.  I’d like to hear what yours is and why.  Why not leave a comment and tell others and help others who might not know of a good app to use.