HashTab is a small, free, Windows shell extension that adds a tab called “File Hashes” to the Windows Explorer file properties (there is also a Mac version). This tab will allow you to see the hash information of a file.

So why should you care about the hash information of a file? Hashes, which appear to be a long string of numbers and letters are designed to verify the integrity of a file. The creator or host of a file will often provide the Hash of a file and once you have downloaded it, you can view the hash of the file on your own computer and compare them. If they don’t match there may have been some sort of corruption during the download.
The chances of a file becoming corrupted during download increases as the file becomes larger. So, if you were downloading something like a 600mb Linux ISO, you will definitely want to check its Hash.

The other use of Hashes is for security reasons. Lets say that there is a download link of a certain application on a popular site. This application is so popular that the creator has been forced to host the file on various mirrors to save on bandwidth. The problem is, how would you know if one of those mirrors has been compromised and that the file hasn’t been altered? You would compare the hash provided on the site to the hash of the file that you downloaded.

Hashtab makes that task easy. In fact, I have provided the MD5 Hash of the Hashtab setup file so you can check it yourself. To check it, right click on the file once you have downloaded it, goto “Properties” and then the “File Hashes” tab. Copy and paste the MD5 hash provided below into the application and it will compare them.
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A common problem that occurs with just about all modern Windows operating systems is when a Windows user loses access to their data and settings. For some reason, Windows no longer recognizes a profile belonging to its user and the next time that user logs on, it appears as a fresh account. This can be caused by a hard drive error, joining/leaving a domain, file system issues and a change of username.

Reprofiler is a small, freeware and portable tool designed to reassign the data and settings of a Windows user account to another account. There are ways for technicians to do this with some registry tweaks and by changing permissions (which I have personally had to do a handful of times) but this application makes it much easier so all you have to do is press some buttons.
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While technically not a “repair tool”, SSDTweaker is an application designed to tweak an operating system to get the most out of a Solid State Drive.
Solid State Drives (SSD) have a massive speed advantage over older hard drives because there are no moving parts. However, one of the disadvantages of SSD’s is that each data block on the drive has a limited amount of times it can be overwritten (about 10,000 vs a Hard Drives 1-5 million cycles). Windows constantly writes information to the hard drive such as indexing the files to make file searches faster, creating a page file and more. This will reduce the performance of an solid state drive over time.

This is where SSDTweaker comes in, SSDTweaker allows you to tweak the following:
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CrystalDiskInfo is a small, freeware and portable tool designed to read the S.M.A.R.T data of a Hard Drive and come to an overall conclusion of the hard drives health. It will also display the S.M.A.R.T data as a list so you can see the specific issue that a hard drive may have.
This application has a wealth of other features such as showing the temperature of the hard drive, easily make it start up when the system starts, graph the health of a hard drive over time and more.
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Microsoft has tightened up security in Windows Vista and 7 by disallowing access to critical system files using a Unix like permission system. While this is great for the average user because it helps protect them from viruses and themselves preventing them from being able to accidentally delete a critical system file. It isn’t so great for a Computer Technician who may need to access those areas.

Even if your user account is set to be an Administrator, there are many files and folders you cannot access including something as simple as changing the Start Menu under Windows 7. If you try, you will get an “Access Denied” error because SYSTEM owns this folder, not your user account. While there is a round-about way to assign yourself permission of these files, its a little long winded.

This is where Rizone’s “Take Ownership” Extension comes in. It is a small, freeware and portable application that will add a “Take Ownership” option to your right click context menu. Just right click on the file or folder you want to be able to access, and choose “Take Ownership” and it will assign you the necessary rights.
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Have you ever had to backup a clients files to a CD or DVD? I think most of us have at some point and it can be tedious sorting out how many files will fit on a single disk, especially if the client has a lot of data.

This is where Capacity comes in to make the task of backing up to CD or DVD much easier. Capacity will automatically separate the files into different CD or DVD sized folders. It can even create these CD/DVD sized folders based on the file type if you want so you can keep all documents on one CD and pictures on another. There is also other sorting criteria such as by month created, by month modified and by file size.

Capacity is small and mostly portable (requires .NET 3.5) application with a donation-ware license. This means it is free to use but if you like it you should consider donating to the developer.

This application is definitely worth keeping on your onsite USB drive and the backup machine in your workshop.
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Fabs AutoBackup is a small, portable application that allows you to pick and choose what you (or your client) want to back up with simple check boxes. The program does the rest. After the format, you can also use AutoBackup to restore all the files back to where they should be. We have actually covered Fabs AutoBackup about a year ago but it is now Windows Vista and Windows 7 Compatible and had added quite a few new features making it worth mentioning again.
For a list of what AutoBackup supports backing up and restoring, read on.
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For this weeks repair tool of the week I am going to be mentioning two applications that compliment each other and manage the attachments in the email application “Outlook”.
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KillProcess is exactly what it sounds like, a process killer. It is small, freeware and is available as an installer or a portable version. KillProcess has some interesting features that makes it a great little application for computer technicians. It has the ability create “kill lists” where you create a list of processes you want to kill, load this list at a later time like at a clients house and the application will kill all the processes in the list if they exist on the clients computer.
A typical use for this would be to generate a list of applications that clients often have on their computer that slows down the machine (and thus, slowing down your work even if your job is to make it faster). For example, it could kill the processes of Norton, AVG, McAfee, NOD, MSN Messenger, AIM, iPod and Printer Drivers. Once you have some free memory you can get into MSConfig or Add/Remove programs and do your work.

KillProcess also has the ability to kill protected Windows processes and allows you to mutli-select processes so you can kill multiple processes at once (Process Explorer cannot do this).
KillProcess can also scan the running processes on the computer and kill them on sight which is handy if you are trying to remove a virus that keeps relaunching itself.

This tool is definitely worth having to deal with some of the tougher virus jobs.
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Defraggler is a freeware defragmentation tool from the people who brought us CCleaner and Recuva. What makes Defraggler different from other defragging applications is its ability to defragment specific files and folders rather than the entire hard drive. It is also very quick with both the analyze and defragmenting stages compared to other software like the built in Windows defragger.

A great use for this application would be when you are onsite and dont have the time to defragment the entire hard drive. You could just defrag the Windows and Program Files directory since those are the two most used directories by most users and you would see a small speed increase depending on the fragmentation.
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