There are many lists on the internet and this one is no different. For my own amusement, I've gathered together a list of my top Windows programs. I'm not talking about my favorite programs, I'm talking about the most important programs I use, the first ones I install on a new machine. Without these programs, my life would be spent in frustration. So, let the countdown begin.
1. Xmarks
This is my absolute favorite program (I know, I said I wasn't talking about favorites, it just turns out that my favorite program is a much needed utility). Xmarks will sync your bookmarks across a multitude of web browsers including Firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome, and some mobile device browsers. I got so sick of maintaining different bookmarks from computer to computer or even on the same machine with different browsers that I searched and searched for a solution. I've been an early adopter of Xmarks as a result, and have used it faithfully for 2 to 3 years now. It works perfectly and behind the scenes and it's a breeze to set up with your favorite browser.
2. LastPass
I'm not sure if this is the best password management program out there, I'm still rather partial to the built in Keychain for Mac OS X and also 1Password for OS X. However, in today's world, one needs to keep a secure record of all passwords. As companies increase security, resetting passwords also increases in difficulty, and sometimes ends up with a locked account. LastPass makes it easy to have all your internet passwords available with any browser of your choosing. It can also create identities and groups to further refine your password handling. It can auto fill forms with a preset identity, and it can store secure notes which can be used to store keys for programs, credit cards, etc. This may not be the best program out there, but it is available across platforms and browsers and maintains a much needed functionality that everyone should utilize.
3. Windows Live Sync
I started using Windows Live Sync in it's beta stage on Mac OS X when it was called Foldershare. I had certain files that I wanted to copy to another machine in the background in the same manner that Time Machine worked. Windows Live Sync has been backing up my files flawlessly for several years now. I now use it for my windows machines to backup my entire documents, music, videos, and pictures to my profile on my desktop machine. I also backed up game data so that I wouldn't have to download Gigabytes of information when I switched between playing a MMORPG on the laptop and on the desktop. No matter what machine I am on, if I make a change it is automatically synchronized with the other computer as long as it is on. If it isn't on, it'll wait until it is. It's better than any backup program because my data is available on any machine and I can alter it at any time. A backup usually hides the files in a proprietary format or image and is inaccessible except when restoring the backup. There's not much more to say, it works and it works well and I wouldn't want to live life without it.
4. Firefox
Sure, there are faster browsers out there, but few have as many features and plug-ins as Firefox. The open source community has worked on this program for years, and well before it was ever called Firefox or Mozilla. With each major update it adds new functionality and remains compatible with the vast majority of websites (nevermind those that deliberately force you to use the browser that should not be named). The plethora of plug-ins is what really makes this browser shine though. I constantly hear my wife complain about pop-ups with Google Chrome, not me. Ad Block Plus stops 99.9% of annoying pop-ups. There are plugins that block ads in gmail, banners, etc. You can change the appearance with skins, not that I bother, I like the standard UI just fine. It isn't integrated with your computer's shell, it's widely supported, it's fast enough, stable, and most of all with the addition of plug-ins, the safest browser on the planet.
5. Microsoft Security Essentials
Okay, so there are tons of anti-virus programs out there and people generally don't know which one to pick and end up paying through the nose for Norton or McAfee, which are fine... I guess. I just don't like how they install themselves so deeply into your system that you'll never remove them completely. Plus, I don't need all those bells and whistles. The other free anti-virus programs are usually adware and will constantly bug you to pay for them. Enter - Microsoft Security Essentials. It is provided free from Microsoft, installs cleanly and is unobtrusive. And since it is created by Microsoft, you'll know they're watching the most important parts of your system. So far, it has been effective in detecting viruses in scanned files or when I run a download I didn't tell it to scan. It doesn't offer website spoofing protection or anything like that, just a simple anti-virus to protect you from your download lust.
And there it is, my list of absolute must-have programs for any new installation of Windows. I've spent a lot of time testing other programs that claim to do the same as those in my list and they all fall short. Most of these programs I've used for years and they have proven themselves time and time again, and more than once saved me when I've done something stupid like erase the MBR on my backup drive.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Windows 7 image backup woes
In a previous post I mentioned that I wanted to move strictly to Windows over Macintosh because of issues related to expense and getting all computers in my household to work nicely together.
That has proven to be more difficult that originally anticipated as I nearly lost my backup. Since then, things had been working fine until I realized that there is one program that there is no possible Windows equivalent for; MacFamilyTree. Every single Windows genealogy program has something that annoys me, and none have all the features that the Mac one does. So, I decided that I would run that on my Mac partition, only, I didn't leave enough room on that partition to really work with it. It was bad enough that in order to update Mac OS X I had to delete a bunch of programs to give enough space for the update which required 5 GB of free space.
This leads me to the point of my post today. I needed to change the partition sizes. How can I do that and still keep all my files/folders and programs in Windows? It turns out, the built in software for Windows does not allow this.
To start, my system was set up with a Mac partition taking up about 18 GB, Windows took up the remainder, which was about 212 GB. I wanted to give about 32 GB to Mac and drop Windows to about 200 GB.
Using the built in backup software in Windows, I created a disk image on an external drive, it was about 70 GB of data. Everything seemed fine. I even used Administrative Tools and Disk Management to "Shrink" the primary Windows partition before making the image (this does not actually change the partition information on the master boot record, it is internal to windows only and any other OS will still see windows at the original size of the partition).
Then I first tried to use my existing Mac OS X installation to remove the Bootcamp partition, created a new one at the newer size and tried to reinstall Windows again.
During the install, windows has repair options which allow you to select the backed up disk image to restore to. I tried that. What it did was unexpected. It reformatted my hard drive, but because Windows cannot read the Mac Extended Journaled partition, it formatted that as empty space, thus removing Mac OS X entirely from the computer. This might be great if you wanted that extra space back, although I have a feeling that certain information is housed on that partition that if rewritten as a FAT or NTFS partition it would damage the EFI boot information and render the computer unbootable, but that is just a guess and something I'm not willing to experiment with.
After discovering that, I knew I needed to go back. So, I reinstalled Mac OS X, effectively removing the new windows recovered installation. I started Bootcamp all over again and this time just installed windows without using the disk image backup.
After Windows was installed, I used the recovery tools to get my files back from the disk image.
Problem 1: I created a new user account when I installed Windows with a different name from my old account. The files and folders were created as they were in the old setup and thus created a new user folder. This means that the files are also secured for that user only and you would have to be an administrator to access them and to change their attributes to your new user. This was too much work for me.
Problem 2: this method did not restore my programs!
The only partial solution was to undo the restore from disk image, and create a new user with my old user name, log in to that user and ensure that user had administrative rights, then finally do the restore while logged in to that user. It brought back all my files and folders, but none of my personal settings were saved. I spent an evening getting most of my programs back and changing my desktop settings to my liking.
So, what have we learned here? For one, the windows disk image is just that. It is not a copy of certain partitions, it is a copy of your disk and only of those things Windows can read natively. Any file system on that disk that Windows cannot read will be replaced with empty disk space upon reimaging. And, using the disk image after the OS install to restore information only works for personal files and folders, no programs will be restored and neither will personal desktop settings.
For anyone out there who wants to change their partition size for a windows installation on a Mac using bootcamp, the built in software for both OS's is not good. Bootcamp can't resize a partition once it is created and neither can Apple's Disk Utility. Windows can resize, but it is virtual and not written to the MBR. I'm sure there are 3rd party programs that can do this, but don't rely on the built in OS programs to help you there.
That has proven to be more difficult that originally anticipated as I nearly lost my backup. Since then, things had been working fine until I realized that there is one program that there is no possible Windows equivalent for; MacFamilyTree. Every single Windows genealogy program has something that annoys me, and none have all the features that the Mac one does. So, I decided that I would run that on my Mac partition, only, I didn't leave enough room on that partition to really work with it. It was bad enough that in order to update Mac OS X I had to delete a bunch of programs to give enough space for the update which required 5 GB of free space.
This leads me to the point of my post today. I needed to change the partition sizes. How can I do that and still keep all my files/folders and programs in Windows? It turns out, the built in software for Windows does not allow this.
To start, my system was set up with a Mac partition taking up about 18 GB, Windows took up the remainder, which was about 212 GB. I wanted to give about 32 GB to Mac and drop Windows to about 200 GB.
Using the built in backup software in Windows, I created a disk image on an external drive, it was about 70 GB of data. Everything seemed fine. I even used Administrative Tools and Disk Management to "Shrink" the primary Windows partition before making the image (this does not actually change the partition information on the master boot record, it is internal to windows only and any other OS will still see windows at the original size of the partition).
Then I first tried to use my existing Mac OS X installation to remove the Bootcamp partition, created a new one at the newer size and tried to reinstall Windows again.
During the install, windows has repair options which allow you to select the backed up disk image to restore to. I tried that. What it did was unexpected. It reformatted my hard drive, but because Windows cannot read the Mac Extended Journaled partition, it formatted that as empty space, thus removing Mac OS X entirely from the computer. This might be great if you wanted that extra space back, although I have a feeling that certain information is housed on that partition that if rewritten as a FAT or NTFS partition it would damage the EFI boot information and render the computer unbootable, but that is just a guess and something I'm not willing to experiment with.
After discovering that, I knew I needed to go back. So, I reinstalled Mac OS X, effectively removing the new windows recovered installation. I started Bootcamp all over again and this time just installed windows without using the disk image backup.
After Windows was installed, I used the recovery tools to get my files back from the disk image.
Problem 1: I created a new user account when I installed Windows with a different name from my old account. The files and folders were created as they were in the old setup and thus created a new user folder. This means that the files are also secured for that user only and you would have to be an administrator to access them and to change their attributes to your new user. This was too much work for me.
Problem 2: this method did not restore my programs!
The only partial solution was to undo the restore from disk image, and create a new user with my old user name, log in to that user and ensure that user had administrative rights, then finally do the restore while logged in to that user. It brought back all my files and folders, but none of my personal settings were saved. I spent an evening getting most of my programs back and changing my desktop settings to my liking.
So, what have we learned here? For one, the windows disk image is just that. It is not a copy of certain partitions, it is a copy of your disk and only of those things Windows can read natively. Any file system on that disk that Windows cannot read will be replaced with empty disk space upon reimaging. And, using the disk image after the OS install to restore information only works for personal files and folders, no programs will be restored and neither will personal desktop settings.
For anyone out there who wants to change their partition size for a windows installation on a Mac using bootcamp, the built in software for both OS's is not good. Bootcamp can't resize a partition once it is created and neither can Apple's Disk Utility. Windows can resize, but it is virtual and not written to the MBR. I'm sure there are 3rd party programs that can do this, but don't rely on the built in OS programs to help you there.
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