The Winhelponline Blog

Default Programs Editor is a very useful tool which helps you to edit file type associations, add or remove AutoPlay handlers and static context menu entries. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, there is no option provided to add or edit context menu entries and static verbs (as in Windows XP’s "File Types" dialog.) Here is where the Default Programs Editor comes in handy.

Features of Default Programs Editor

File Type Settings

• Add, Edit, and Delete context menu items
• Change file type icon & description
• Change an extension’s associated file type

Autoplay Settings

• Add, Edit, and Delete autoplay handlers
• Change which autoplay options are available for any media type
• Change the default autoplay handler

Default Programs Settings

• Add or Remove default associations

Screenshots

Fig 1: Default Programs Editor main window.

Fig 2: Context Menu Editor. (Remember the File Types dialog in Windows XP?)

Fig 3: Add or Remove AutoPlay Entries and manage settings

Fig 4: File Associations Editor

Fig 5: Additional Program Options

Default Programs Editor is designed for Vista and Windows 7. [Visit the Author's site to download the software.]

Both Windows Sysinternals and Nirsoft offer amazing set of tools to tune up and troubleshoot PCs. The combined total of such tiny tools from both the above sites certainly exceeds hundred. Some of the tools in the suite don’t have an automatic update facility, which makes managing them slightly difficult. To alleviate this problem and allow easy organizing and automatic updating of these tools, we have the Windows System Control Center tool from KLS Soft.

WSCC is a free, portable program that allows you to install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. WSCC is only an interface, you need to download and install the utilities separately. Alternatively, WSCC can use the http protocol to download and run the programs. The included Update Manager can check for newer versions of the utilities already installed and can download and install the missing items.

The current version of WSCC supports the following utility suites:

• Windows Sysinternals Suite (including support for "Sysinternals Live" service)
• NirSoft Utilities

Many people (especially IT/Helpdesk techs) who use Sysinternals & Nirsoft utilities very frequently, would find Windows System Control Center very useful. This utility is completely portable, which means no installation is required. This utility runs in Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / 7.

WSCC – Screenshots

[Download Windows System Control Center from KLS Soft.]

Did you download a movie video recently and later found that the audio or the video part of the movie does not play? This has to do with a missing audio or video Codec. To know which Codec you need to play your favorite video files correctly, you may use one of these tools discussed in this article. These tools help you find out the Codec used in a particular media file, and then download the appropriate Codec from the web. (more…)

OK, you got the ISO of latest Windows 7 build from a friend. Before installing it, how do you make sure that the ISO was obtained from a trustworthy source and that it had not been tampered with? The Windows 7 ISO Verifier was created exactly for that purpose. The Windows 7 ISO Verifier tool, created by Long Zheng and Sven Groot, verifies the integrity of the Windows 7 ISO by verifying the MD5 hash to ensure that it has not been tampered with.

Image: Courtesy of istartedsomething.com

You can download The Windows 7 ISO Verifier from Long’s site. As noted in their site, this download only works for English versions of Windows 7 ISOs.

Earlier we wrote about the Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) tool in Windows 7. It’s a nice tool that records the steps to reproduce a problem in the computer, and stores the data in a MHTML document. Here is another tool from Microsoft Technet which helps you record the steps you perform in your computer and store it in a video (.WMV) file. It’s the ScreenRecorder utility, which is similar to Microsoft Camcorder (utility written for Windows 95/98 which saves the output to an .AVI file). ScreenRecorder works in Windows XP (.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or higher), Windows Vista and Windows 7. (more…)