Maintaining Windows in decent working order can be a full time job and it's a pain to have to download multiple programs to keep everything in check.

Pristy Utils 2009 is a collection of tools to maintain your PC. It features everything from a power scheme manager to a web management utility and Vista tweaker

The first Pristy Utils 2009 utility, System PowerDown serves to schedule shutdowns, restarts, suspensions and blocking sessions in the PC after a specified time. Web assistant is the second application which works as a quick shortcut for different Web related uses such as sending mails, files over the internet etc. The third tool is called PC detector. It displays all the information from your computer hardware in eight different sections: - CPU, screen, sound, memory, network, disk storage devices, and so on.

Finally, Pristy Utils 2009 has three applications for maintenance tasks - a cleaner to free RAM Memory, File Wipeout for secure deletion of files, and a desktop clock which is basically a widget for the desktop. More recently, Pristy Utils 2009 has been bolstered with a Vista booster that defrags your boot sequence. However, what this program is crying out for is a defragmentation tool - it's all very well cleaning up your hard drive but it doesn't speed them up which is where a defrag tool would come in really useful.

Pristy Utils 2009 is a great all round lightweight maintenance and web management tool although it lacks a few essentials.

Download Pristy Utils 2009 1.0.8 in Softonic

There are literally hundreds of utilities out there designed to download videos from the Net, mainly aimed at YouTube.

By it's name alone, DownUtube doesn't pretend to do anything else (although it does work with a few other sites too) but at least it does the job well. DownUtube allows you to download embedded videos and multimedia from Google Video, YouTube, Apple.com Movie Trailers and IMDB.

Like most good video downloaders, DownUtube features an integrated search facility to help you find videos on the various sites which means you don't even have to open a browser. It can also follow RSS feeds for your favourite users on YouTube. If you can't wait for your clip to download, then you can also play them because they download thanks to an integrated player called MPlayer. There are various bugs that need ironing out however - sometimes downloads will stop for no apprent reason even if your connection is fine and some videos can cause DownUtube to simply crash.

As a simple solution to your video downloading needs, DownUtube is a great search utility and downloader that eliminates the need for a browser.

Download DownUtube 3.0 Beta 3 in Softonic

Getting a video out has always been one of the best ways to while away an evening at home. However, these days few people choose to trudge down to the video store, preferring to download a movie, or plunder the near-infinite archives on popular video sharing sites such as YouTube and Google Video. Until recently it's been impossible to obtain movies from these sites without having to stream them online. However, Vdownloader is one of a number of programs changing that, allowing you to download these videos to your computer in AVI or MPEG format.

Essentially what this means is that you don't need to wait an age for popular videos to start streaming and can keep your favourites on your hard drive to watch at any time. This application does the job as simply as you could wish for. The executable makes a very small footprint and although the interface is very barren, it makes it easy to grab videos from YouTube, Google Video, Grinvi or DailyMotion very quickly. Basically all you need to do is copy and paste the link to the video into the box provided and hit ‘download'. Alternatively, you can browse the sites themselves by selecting the portal of your choice from the drop-down menu.

In one sense, the sparseness of the interface is an advantage, as it keeps things as clean and simple as possible. In another respect we were left wanting for extra features and options to help us peruse and download the videos we want. Practically the only setting you can tweak is the via the format dialog, allowing you to specify the format of the saved video (AVI or MPEG), the size of the video and the audio bitrate. We feel that the addition of a built-in video search tool or some video compression utilities would have lifted the program from being a good program to a great one.

Add to the fact that you can't download embedded movies like the ones you find on the front page of Google Video and you can't help feel frustrated that VDownloader doesn't do quite as much as it perhaps could. Having said this, the app is still in the early stages of development and the fact that it is so lightweight makes it prefect for those who want to grab video content with the minimum of fuss.

Download VDownloader 0.73 in Softonic

If you have to decompress files regularly, especially image files, you may find Zipeg interesting. It's definitely one of the nicest image decompressors I've used in a while and best of all, there's no registration or payment required.

The key feature of this program is a cool preview function which allows you to see what you are going to decompress before you do it. This is great if you can't remember what's in a file or are suspicious about its contents. It supports a huge variety of archive formats including:
ZIP, RAR, ARJ, LHA/LZH, 7z, TAR, GZ, TGZ, BZIP2, CPIO, RPM, ISO, CHM, Z, CBR, CBZ, WAR and EAR.

You can extract/unzip items simply by dragging them and the interface is remarkably easy to use and good looking. It can process archives in the background whilst you work, sorts content of folders by name, size or date and automatically checks for the latest updates.

This is one of the best image compression utilities out there although the thumbnails can take some time to appear when you select a file.

Download Zipeg 2.4.0.922 in Softonic

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor (A starting list of auto-run locations was obtained from David Solomon's "Windows Internals" seminar), shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them.

These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc.

Download AutoRuns 9.34 in Softonic

FairStars CD Ripper is a free powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats files on-the-fly. Free CDDB is supported(Querying & Submiting). It supports normalization when ripping, and also support ID3 tag. FairStars CD Ripper also supports playback with its built-in player.

Download FairStars CD Ripper 1.24 in Softonic

Rainlendar is a lightweight and customizable calendar for your desktop.

When I first launched Rainlendar I was impressed by the widget-like appearance. Widget are small, handy gadgets that can pop up on your screen to show you all types of information, from weather forecasts, to stock charts or the time and date. They are usually small, attractive and very discreetly fit on your desktop. Rainlendar’s elements similarly have that cloud-like feel. The notes, events and calendar windows float around on your desktop and can be moved about your screen and disappear or reappear in a touch.

Rainlendar stands out from classic calendar programs thanks to a highly customizable interface and the possibility to quickly and effortlessly jot down notes and important events. Although it only comes with two different skins, the program offers a link to www.customize.org, where you should find the style which suits your tastes. But Rainlendar doesn’t stop there. You can set up hotkeys to manage Rainlendar at the push of a key and, thanks to various plug-ins present in the program, integrate Rainlendar directly to other utilities like Outlook and iCalendar. Rainlendar is always within reach as a tray icon on your desktop and bringing it up just takes a click of your mouse.

Unfortunately Rainlendar’s real originality is also its weakness. The program offers a wide range of skins but adding these to the program is far from straightforward. You have to drag your downloaded skin into the Skins folder for the Rainlendar program file and then browse to the new skin from the ‘Edit Skin’ option in Rainlendar’s drop down menu.

If you like to keep your calendar on your PC, but find the one offered by Windows too dull, Rainlendar is a good alternative. You’ll enjoy setting your own style and the way it discreetly fits onto your desktop.

Download Rainlendar 2.4 in Softonic

VirtualDub is a video capture and processing utility licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is designed to be a general utility that can trim and clean up video before exporting to tape or processing with another program. It does not possess the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files, which you can extend with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is best at processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and handle BMP image sets.

Download VirtualDub 1.8.5 Stable in Softonic

MessenPass is a password recovery tool that reveals the passwords of the most popular instant messenger applications, such as MSN Messenger, Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Trillian, Gaim and many more.

The application can only be used to recover the passwords for the current logged-on user on your local computer, and it only works if you chose the remember your password in one of the above programs. You cannot use this utility for grabbing the passwords of other users.

Download MessenPass 1.22 in Softonic

Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features like such as Tabbed Browsing Interface, Mouse Gestures, Super Drag&Drop, Privacy Protection, AD Hunter, RSS Reader, IE Extensions Support, External Utility Bar, Skinning and much more.

Download Maxthon 2.1.4.443 in Softonic

CPU-Z is a freeware utility that provides some information on your CPU with which you can identify areas that may be optimized to improve the efficiency of your system. Some of the topics checked by this sofware include:

• Processor name and vendor
• Core stepping and process
• Processor package
• Processor current core voltage
• Internal and external clocks, clock multiplier
• Partial overclock detection
• Processor features, including supported instructions sets
• L1 and L2 cache informations : location, size, speed, technology
• Motherboard informations : BIOS, chipset, memory, AGP

Download CPU-Z 1.47 in Softonic

All My Movies is a nifty utility for cataloging one's movie collection. It supports all formats, new ones - DVD, Video CD, AVI and MPEG files, and old ones as well - VHS tapes, for example. The program helps easily track films - which movies are loaned, which ones are borrowed, etc. Most importantly, the program is specifically designed for DVDs and works fully automatically with all digital carriers.

Basically, all a user has to do is to insert a DVD or scan a hard-drive. The program will extract all movie information - title, director, actors, description, genre, languages, subtitles, etc. If absent, this information can be imported from online movie databases, like IMDb.com with one mouse click or entered manually.

The best thing about All My Movies is how easy it is to use. Having a tree-like database structure, program owner can quickly sort movies by genre, actor or director. Another great perk is an option to capture movie screens for DVDs and AVI files and attach them to the database. User comments can be added too.

True movie fans with thousands of titles in their collection are certain to like the fact that movie data stored with All My Movies can be exported to HTML, MS Excel or plain text files. In addition, the program comes with password protection options to prevent unauthorized access, and a straightforward loan manager. Another advantage is that the program support third-party plug-ins, including database import from other popular movie cataloguing applications.

Download All My Movies 5.0 in Softonic

Boasting the ability to improve the speed of your downloads by an incredible 300 percent, Download Accelerator Plus features multi-server connections to let you squeeze the best possible performance from your Net connection.

The beauty of the software lies in its simplicity, you just choose the file you want to download, tell the program where you want it to be filed away then forget about as DAP does all the donkey work for you. What’s more, if you get booted offline for any reason the software will automatically resume the download from the place it had already reached.

DAP even searches for “mirror sites” for you and this serves to make downloading a pretty painless process, with the app sucking up files fairly quickly. DAP is a veritable feature-fest making the whole process much easier by including functions like automatic hang-up on completion of a download, download scheduling, and dial-up configuration – a handy tool for anyone not yet blessed with broadband.

The only slight niggle for some people may be the fact that it is nigh-on impossible to turn the thing off, unlike most of its peers, where you can choose to manually download something fairly easily. Having said this, because the program is so easy to use and integrates beautifully with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers, there really is little reason why you wouldn’t want this great utility keeping watch of your downloads all the time.

Download Download Accelerator Plus 8.7 in Softonic

This clever utility automatically plays the Athan five times a day at every prayer time. Covering more than six million cities, towns, and villages all over the world, the app includes the Calculation Methods, Hijri-Gregorian date conversion and Qiblah direction. The Athan sounds from Makkah, Madina and Al-Aqsa are available, and it boasts multilingual support within the application.

Download Athan (Azan) Basic 3.4 in Softonic

Hard Drive Inspector is a powerful, convenient and effective program based on the S.M.A.R.T. technology, which allows controlling the state of your hard disk drives. Most computer users argue that the information stored on their computer is the most valuable element of the computer system.

With the help of the S.M.A.R.T. System, Hard Drive Inspector allows you to predict a possible failure of the HDD before this occurs. As access to electronic information becomes more and more vital in business and at home, Hard Drive Inspector allows exceeding the traditional limits of HDDs reliability, thus extending the level of valuable user data protection.

Hard Drive Inspector has a flexible option system, which allows you to customize the functionality of this utility, according to your needs. Hard Drive Inspector has an easy-to-use, nice-looking interface. It also offers many useful features, which make the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring process full-scale and easy.

Download Hard Drive Inspector 2.100 in Softonic

Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer.

This includes files emptied from the Windows Recycle Bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or even MP3 players.

It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses.

Download Recuva 1.18 in Softonic

CCleaner is a small utility that will take care of a few of the important maintenance tasks that every computer user should carry out as regularly as possible to keep their systems in top shape. Fast, reliable and easy to use - CCleaner it's one of the best cleaning systems out there.

For me, the beauty of CCleaner is the speed at which it carries out the various scans and fixes. Its main purpose is to clean any unnecessary files from your hard-drive and on opening the program you see the various aspects of Windows that you can search through and clear. CCleaner will also detect your installed applications that may hold on to files which are no longer any use, such as Google Earth histories or Flash Player configurations.

The interface in CCleaner is very easy to navigate and before taking any action, you will always be asked to confirm that you are sure about what you want to do. There is a useful registry checker that will quickly check its integrity, and let you fix bad entries after making a backup. CCleaner uninstall and startup tools are handy to have and simply add to the usability of this very rounded little maintenance assistant.

The most recent release of CCleaner now works on Vista with Admin permissions where available and features various bug fixes and improvements to the translated versions.

CCleaner makes keeping your PC clean easy for beginners and experts alike. It's small, fast, comprehensive, and free to download it - get cleaning now!

Download CCleaner 2.11.636 in Softonic

There aren't many apps out there that give you more control over how your CD/DVD drive door is used but CD-Door Guard is one of them.

The question is, do you really need it? Well yes if you want to avoid the problem of your CD door crashing or getting stuck. CD-Door Guard is a utility that helps you to deal with drive door errors. The program works by closing the drive's door when you forget to do it and allows you to lock it if you want to protect the door from children for example.

In addition, CD-Door Guard allows you to open and close the CD/DVD door using the mouse only and can also remind you if you've left a disk inside (very useful if you've been searching for that missing music CD). CD-Door Guard's interface is extremely friendly and removes the need to worry about disk getting stuck or doors getting jammed.

CD-Door Guard is an easy to use solution for those worried about damage to their CD or DVD drive.

Download CD-Door Guard 2.6.1 in Softonic

Preventing data loss is never an easy job because there are so many things that can go wrong but Active@ Disk Monitor goes a long way to giving you peace of mind.

Active@ Disk Monitor is a disk utility that checks and monitors the status of hard drives to help prevent data loss using S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). This program relies on your hardware supporting SMART so if it doesn't, it won't be of much use to you.

Active@ Disk Monitor monitors hard disk parameters such as Temperature, Head Flying Height and Spin-Up Time but most importantly, notifies you when a critical moment is approaching on your hard drive. Active@ Disk Monitor also displays hard disk information, current S.M.A.R.T. attributes and the overall status of the hard disk's health.

The only problem you may experience is when Active@ Disk Monitor kicks in while you are using your PC - it can seriously slow down whatever you are doing if it performs a full scan.

Active@ Disk Monitor is a useful tool to warn of impending disk failure before the worst happens.

Download Active@ Disk Monitor 1.2.648 in Softonic

When analyzing a software application one must praise its virtues, but also look for possible flaws that developers can improve in future versions. However, in the case of Glary Utilities it's really difficult to find anything that we don't like.

This excellent toolkit includes a handful of system utilities that enable you to tweak, repair, optimize and improve your system's performance. Tools are conveniently categorized so that you can quickly find what you're looking for: disk cleaner, uninstall manager, memory optimizer, file shredder, duplicates finder, tracks eraser... just about any tool you need. They're all generally very intuitive and in case they make important changes to the system (like the Registry repairing tool) the program creates a backup copy first.

Not all the tools included in Glary Utilities include configuration settings, something we missed in some of them such as the Disk cleaner. Also, we would like to have a Firefox Assistant, the same way the program includes an Internet Explorer Assistant.

Download Glary Utilities 2.6.1 in Softonic