Reminder: Handy programs to have....

A handy program to have is Seatools for Windows, from Seagate the hard-drive maker. This program also tests other drives not made by Seagate, such as Western Digital, etc., so if you're wondering about the health of your hard-drive, you should give this a try. And by the way, they say this only works up to Windows 7 of Windows, but I've also used it on Windows 8 Pro and it works fine.
Generally speaking, whatever works in Windows 7 also works in Windows 8.

Another very useful freebie is the Belarc Advisor, from Belarc which is a great little program that does a scan of your computer, and then shows you a complete report on everything that's on there, such as your security updates, your licensed programs, your Windows Key Codes, and other vital and important information. If you've ever wondered where you could find all these things, this is the program that does it for you. It gives you detailed information on your various main components, as well as what's been installed on your computer, and it will update that information periodically to keep itself up to date.

Another don't-be-without-it program is Glary Utilities from Glarysoft, and this one can clean up and correct mistakes in your system with just one click, if you wish. I've used it for a long time, and it does its job nicely without causing more problems than it fixes. It's a very useful little program.

Lastly, from Iceland comes EMCO's MoveOnBoot and this little program is worth its weight in gold if you've ever come up against a file or folder that refused you access to it, but you still wanted to get rid of it, and wanted to do that quickly,
as in cleaning out a virus, for example. How does this work? It is called MoveOnBoot because it works its special magic during a reboot, in between the shutdown part and the reloading of programs into Windows again. So this gives it access to whatever's on your machine, whether system files or restricted files or whatever. It can remove a locked file or folder during that part of the reboot process while those aren't protected, and it works like a charm. Incidentally this
process is similar to the Boot Scan feature in Avast Antivirus, which does a complete scan of your computer during a similar reboot, while the machine is in between shutdown and reloading, and it can access everything on it. The problem I found with that Avast Boot Scan was that it takes so long to complete it, I could have reformatted my drive and re-installed Windows faster. But that's
not a problem with MoveOnBoot - it works quickly and very well.