Go Free, Go OpenSource

It's amazing how much free and opensource stuff are there on the web. I shall confess that it's also amazing how many of these products are of superior quality. I'll just make a list of the best free products I use, and I'll keep updating the list. Any suggestions are appreciated

1. Inkscape: This is a great vector graphics software. It does anything a serious amator user like me needs. I have no clue of professionals.


2. Paint.Net: A great image editing software. You can call it a free, lightweight photoshop. A bunch of free plugins are also around.


3. Free Download Manager (FDM): the name says it all!


4. Firefox and Thunderbird: The great, fast, secure, free and extensible browser and mail clients from mozilla.


5. Cathy: A fast and lightweight file cataloguer, It catalogs your dvd in 5 seconds (included is the time needed to insert the dvd and let it spin up!!!!) and searches your catalogs in fraction of a second. Give it a try!


6. KMPlayer: ever needed a "play everything", "have all features", be light, be performant, "don't bug my OS" media player? Now you have one for free :D


7. CDBurner XP: Don't get lost in the name: it burns DVD too, and works on Vista as well! Great tool.


8. IsoBuster: Almost anything you need about CD/DVD images are free in this app. Although there are some "Pro" functionality, they are mostly needed only by the pro!


9. Daemon Tools Lite: mount CD/DVD images as virtual drives, Great, lightweight, fast tool. It reads most major image formats.


10. Audacity: Just need to edit your sound files, add some effects, cut some parts, reduce the noise? You don't need to buy sound forge.


11. VirtualDUB: The equivalent to audacity, but about video files! great tool.


12. SUPER: Convert media files from any format, to any format, in any quality. You'll have many settings to fine-tune the result.


13. Notepad++: Better be named: Notepad*=1e12; //if you know c++.
    Translation for non programmers: "give it a try, it may be useful to you, as well"
    
14. Sql Server 2008 Exoress: Developers, as well as small businesses, can enjoy all functionalities of the database server MS Sql server for free. The limitations are compatible with almost any development senario and, some small business needs.
    
15. Visual Studio Express Editions: If you used hate Microsoft .Net, just because the IDEs where not free, you can now start loving one of the best tools for application development. If you're in a college or university, you can even use the pro version with the DreamSpark program.
    

External Hard Drives Can’t be safely removed

As soon as I bought the 1TB WD My Book External hard drive, I realized the problem: it can’t be safely removed; windows states that it’s in use and any programs that use it should be closed. Not surprisingly, there is no trivial way to know what files are in use and/or what processes are locking the files.

Some googling revealed that I’m not alone on the problem, but found no solution. Some observations:

1. Using the safely remove Hardware tray icon leads to the error message: “Windows can’t stop your ‘Generic volume’ device because it is in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again later”.
2. You go to the drive properties, go to the hardware tab, select the physical drive and click properties. In the window that appears, in Policies tab, the radio buttons are grayed out (disabled) and “Optimize for performance” is selected. It may seem that if one could change to “Optimize for quick removal” the problem would disappear.
3. Using third party tools like the great Sysinternals Process Explorer, the cause for the problem is diagnosed as svchost.exe holding some a file named tracking.log inside System Volume Information folder. This file is running several services on the computer, so it’s difficult to solve the problem in this way.
4. In some forums, it’s suggested that disabling the system restore on the target drive will solve the problem, but in my system it’s completely disabled.
   

I’m using vista business and User account Control is enabled on my system. The grayed out radio buttons were actually a side effect of this. As a workaround, you can switch to the Volumes tab, click populate, this will reopen the dialog box in elevated permissions, In this one the radio buttons are not disabled! Actually this time the “Optimize for quick removal” is selected. Microsoft has forgotten that querying or changing this option requires elevated permissions!!

I have another workaround for the original “safely remove” problem: I simply deny all users from accessing “System Volume Information” and all its contents and the problem vanishes!!!
If you need more step to step instructions: Right-Click on “System Volume Information”, Select Properties. Go to “security” tab, select “Advanced”. Go to “Owner” tab, if in Vista, Click Edit, Select Your UserName, and check “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects”. Click Ok. Close all Dialog boxes. Right Click on “System Volume Information” again and choose properties. Go to “Security”, if in vista, click “Edit”, Click “Add”, type “everyone”, click “ok”, then in “Permissions for everyone” click the topmost checkbox under “deny” column, this will select all other checkboxes in that column. Click ok.

Good luck with safe removal!!!