ProduKey is a portable free application designed to show you the product keys of Microsoft operating systems and popular software like Microsoft Office, Exchange Server and SQL Server. This feature is handy but we have seen similar functionality in old repair tools of the week like Magical Jellybean Key Finder. However, Produkey has a nice feature for us computer technicians. It has the ability to get the keys off another harddrive or even from another computer over the network.

Imagine this situation. A client brings in a computer that has a copy of Windows XP on it that isnt booting. You determine that some critical Windows files are corrupt and it needs a format. However, the client lost their disk and the license key.
No problems. Install their harddrive into one of your systems, fire up ProduKey and point it to the second hard drive and wham bam, you have their Windows license key.
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Simple Port Forwarding is a now freeware application (was previously $15) that is designed to make forwarding ports on a router easy. This application would be useful to both technicians and clients.
While most technicians know how to port forward a router, this application has a growing list of game/application ports so we know which ports need to be forwarded and saves us having to search for the ports. To use it, you just select which router you are using from its evergrowing list, enter the username and password of the router/modem, choose which game or application you want to port forward and press the Update Router button.
It also has some other nice time saving features such as the ability to show the default username and password for the modem you have chosen.
Of course, if the computer that is having its ports forwarded changes its IP address because of DHCP, the forwarding would no longer work so the appilication includes a quick way to set the IP address of the local computer to static.

This application is definitely worth checking out.
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A few months ago we mentioned Virustotal.com as our repair tool of the week. Its a great site that is designed to scan a single file using the database of many different antivirus brands including AntiVir, Avast!, AVG, ClamAV, FProt, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, NOD32, Panda, Sophos, Symantec (Norton), Trend Micro, Virus Blaster and more. Typically, you visit the website and use their special uploader, but now Virustotal.com have created an uploader so all you have to do is right click on the suspicious file and choose “Send to -> VirusTotal”. Once the file finishes uploading, it will open your browser and show you the results.
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These days, most teenagers are on MSN, KaZzA and MySpace messing up their parents computers for us to fix. One of the common infections that teenagers often end up with are MSN Messenger worms. These worms send messages to all the people on their contact list with a message like this. MSN Virus Cleaner can help remove these worms.

MSN Virus Cleaner is a freeware, portable tool to remove MSN Messenger worms and viruses, and fix many MSN Messenger error codes.
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DeepBurner Portable is a free, portable CD/DVD burning application which happily runs from a USB drive. It has many the features you would expect in burning software like Nero such as creating and copying data CD/DVDs, creating and burning ISO files, overburn and multisession disks. It also has the ability to create autorun menus for your CD as well as creating CD covers. I have used this a few times to get data off clients computers that don’t have any burning software.
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Roguefix is a free, portable detection and removal script to clean computers with fake security warnings from a family of rogue software such as: Antivirus 2008, Antivirus 2009, AntiVirus Lab 2009, AntiSpyCheck, Security toolbar, IEAntiVirus, MSAntivirus, Spyware Preventer, Smart Antivirus 2009, VirusResponse Lab 2009, XP antivirus etc..

I tested Roguefix on my XP virtual machine by installing the two rogueware products "Antivirus Pro" and "Antivirus Protection" (ironically hard to catch when you are actually looking for them) and it removed them both with no problems. This is definitely a nice addition to run alongside Smitfraudfix and Combofix.
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Combofix is a freeware, portable application designed to scan a computer for known malware and, if found, attempt to remove it. I personally use this application very frequently in conjunction with SmitFraudFix to remove Win Antivirus 2008 and its variants. In addition to removing many different rogueware products, it also shows you a log of files that were created or modified in the last month to help you locate potential malware it didnt detect. For example, if there is a randomly named .dll file in the system32 folder that was created on the day of the infection but all other files are dated years ago when Windows was installed, its probably something to do with the virus.

This one is essential for any computer technician who does malware removal work.
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Windows Post Installation Wizard is a application designed to give users choice of what applications, tweaks and scripts to install using an automated system. WPI gives us the ability to easily create a custom application installer.

A typical setup that a technician would have with WPI is to have their OS files and the applications/tweaks on one disk. Once Windows finishes installing, WPI will install the applications such as AVG, FoxIT Reader, Flash etc.. without any input from you. Or, you can make it so you have a choice by clicking checkboxes based on what you want to install.
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Hitman Pro is a freeware piece of software that controls both an inbuilt antivirus and a handful of other popular antivirus and anti-malware products such as Spybot, Ad-Aware, NOD32 etc..
After installing Hitman Pro and running it, it downloads the latest versions of various antivirus and anti-malware products, installs them, updates them to the latest definitions and starts scanning. Its the ultimate set-and-forget tool for complete security scanning. However, due to the time it takes to scan with all the different antimalware packages and the need for a broadband connection to download all the updates, its recommend that you use this application in your workshop only.

Hitman Pro can use the following software to scan for viruses and malware:
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NetSetMan is a small freeware tool designed to allow you to change your computers network settings quickly and easily. Lets say you take a laptop onsite for network related jobs but at home you have a special setup. Then you go onsite and have to keep changing it to “Obtain Automatically” so it works on the clients network. Once you return home, you have to set it all back to the way it was.

This is where NetSetMan comes in, it allows you to make network setting profiles which you can activate based on your location. For example, you may have one setup for your home, one for work and one for when you are on a public wireless access point.
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