What do you need to run Windows? Patience? Fortitude? A computer? More than that, you need utilities. Without these little programs, you’re stuck with the tools Microsoft provides.

There are some wonderful utilities out there--programs that can exponentially improve your computer environment, prevent crashes, protect your data, and make Windows an easier, more pleasant place to work.

And then there are these.

BatteringRAM
We all know that more RAM means better performance, but RAM costs money. That’ s why ShysterWare’s BatteringRAM uses every trick in the book to make your computer think it has more RAM than it really has, theoretically increasing performance by a factor of ten on such common tasks as dragging the mouse or pressing the keyboard’s Q key. BatteringRAM performs this magic through a number of clever tricks. For instance, it fools Windows into writing to memory addresses that don’t exist, speeding operations dramatically while making data retrieval totally irrelevant.

Break4Launch
Don’t you just hate launching a program in Windows? Click the Start button. Drag the mouse up to Programs. Drag the mouse a little to the right. Drag the mouse up or down. And then you still have to let go of the mouse button. Talk about inconvenient! NeverAgain Software’s Break4Launch makes loading programs a cinch by offering you a number of easy-to-understand metaphors. For instance, in Jackie Chan mode, you launch applications by kicking them while performing death-defying stunts over the Windows Registry. Other metaphors include a lunch with your in-laws, a COBOL inventory program from 1963, and a presidential impeachment hearing.

Pardon My Partition
In order to run your system at peak efficiency, you need to partition your hard drive into several smaller pieces, and you’ll need a tool with more precision than an ax. Pardon My Partition, from Pardon My Programming, is the most advanced partitioning utility available today. Not only does it support the standard FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, it can convert your drive to Microsoft’ as-yet-unplanned FAT64. As an added precaution, Pardon My Partition rewrites your drive’s boot sector, translating all of those ones and zeros into French.

Trauma Center
When your computer isn’t working, you’re not getting any work done on your computer. That’s why you need a good diagnostic program--one that will tell you why your system won’t boot or refuses to run any software. In situations like this, Edsel Engineering’s Trauma Center is just the sort of tool you’ll resort to. The complexity and thoroughness of its tests are astonishing. For instance, its video test makes sure your monitor is plugged in, turned on, and facing in the right direction, as well as verify that the integrity of the cathode ray tube hasn’t been compromised by a hammer or ax.

UnClean Sweep Installer Deluxe Pro Commander
Whenever you install a Windows application, it alters your entire working environment to suit its own needs. If you uninstall the program at a later date, it simply deletes a few files and removes the Registry. That’s why you need Quarterhorse’s UnClean Sweep Installer Deluxe Pro Commander. When you use UnClean to remove an unwanted program, this remarkable utility excises every file that came with the program, worked with the program, or was ever associated with a file that knew the program. It also deletes everything in c:\windows that wasn’t put there by UnClean.

CrashIt!
We can be sure of three things in this world: death, taxes, and computers freezing up when you haven’t saved your work for two hours. CrashIt! won’t help much with the first two problems, but put this little lifesaver on your system and Windows will never crash the same way again. A product of Seppuku Software, CrashIt! waits in the background for any activity that could result in a system crash. When it detects a dangerous situation, such as an attempt to save a file, CrashIt! helps you avert disaster by popping up a warning box on screen. At this point you can click on the OK button to discover that your system is no longer responding, or you can simply turn your computer off.

Headache 2000
The Year 2000 problem can be solved with this simple program from DreamOn International. Headache 2000 tests your BIOS, CMOS, OS, I/O, GUI, and AFL-CIO for any millennium-related conflicts. For instance, when midnight rolls around on December 31, 1999, it will check to make sure that you are not working at your computer on New Year’s Eve. The program also looks at your data, converting all two-digit years it finds to four digits, using its special AI Century Estimator to prefix each two-digit number on your hard drive with either a 19, 20, or 42. Finally, Headache 2000 installs a TSR on your system that will work in the background, making your computer believe that it’s always 1999.

© Copyright 1998 by Lincoln Spector

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