The proliferation of mobile devices has driven the demand for portable video. Unfortunately, not every device can play every video format. Thankfully, there are a number of utilities available that can convert video from its native format into a format that is supported by the device on which a user wants to play the video. 1. Free CUDA Video Converter Free CUDA Video Converter is a free utility for performing video conversions. There is also a paid version. The free…
If you’re trying to stretch a thin IT budget, you probably can’t afford a lot of pricey tools. Luckily, a number of highly useful tools are available for free. Some of them even work better and are more efficient than their costlier alternatives. 1: ComboFix When the standard antivirus/malware software can’t seem to find the problem, ComboFix almost always does. It also looks for and removes most rootkits and Trojans. To use this tool, you must completely disable all antivirus…
As IT professionals, we work in an industry that is constantly looking to improve its organizational productivity through the use of software and hardware. We contribute to this by what we do in our jobs. However, there are ways we improve our own productivity by using applications, which will benefit you and the company you work for. Let’s take a look at seven different applications that I think improve our productivity. Launchy Launchy is a small little program that you…
It’s nice to know there are backup tools that can be installed, free of charge, which can handle one, simple task. It’s simple: If you’re not backing up your data, at some point you’re going to regret that mistake. For many medium to large businesses, data is typically backed up via shared directories on a server. But for smaller companies, or end users who have needs outside of shared directories, it’s nice to know there are backup tools that can…
If you work on a network, you then know the value of information. Solid information leads to a strong and worry-free network (or at least as worry-free as you can manage). In order to gather that information, you need the right tools. The tools I speak of are network analyzers. Once you start looking, you can find analyzers of every shape, size, and price. But for most network admins, the free tools do a solid-enough job to get you the…
There are times when a handy disk janitor utility can swoop in and save the day. One of the most frustrating jobs I come across is a hard drive filled to capacity. In many cases this is just a matter of migrating user data or temp files. Sometimes, however, the task isn’t so easy. This is especially true when you’re looking at a Windows server with a smallish C drive that is near capacity. You can dig around and find…
Tracking down the cause of a Blue Screen of Death can be tricky. Here are some steps that may help you zero in on the problem. Anyone who has ever experienced the notorious Windows Blue Screen of Death knows that finding a solution to the problem can be tricky. Fortunately, there are some relatively simple things you can do to help diagnose the problem. 1: Try to reproduce the error The first thing I recommend doing is to try to…
On March 18, 2013, news went around the world about one of the biggest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in history, launched against a site called Spamhaus, in which attackers not only went after the organization’s website itself, but also its providers and some Tier 1 Internet exchanges as well, causing potential collateral damage. Since then however, the situation has only become more complex, with rumors flying around that the attack was not as bad as reported, and hints…
Some organizations intend to keep using Windows XP even in the post-apocalyptic world after Microsoft ends support in 12 months. It’s a calculated risk and one they should weigh up carefully. Even the spectre of security breaches and crashing apps is failing to convince some Windows XP-using organisations to abandon the OS before Microsoft cuts off support in a year’s time. Recent figures, suggest one in five companies using XP plans to stick with it despite the April 8,2014 deadline,…
For most tasks, the disc burning functions built into Windows usually cover all of our basic needs. Personally though, I might want to really get access to under-the-hood settings and fine tune my output. For instance, when I want to burn an ISO for a disc that will go into a finicky drive, I want to be able to not only adjust the burning speed, but also choose additional settings for disc-at-once or session-at-once modes. With discs going out of…