History Viewer is a simple tool which can give you more information about what's been happening recently on your PC.

What have people been doing online, for instance? History Viewer can detail the URL history, address bar, cookies, downloads and more, for IE, Firefox and Chrome.

The program can highlight plenty of Windows-related histories, too. In a click or two you can view recently opened documents, the searches you've made, the programs you've launched, and more.

There's even a USB Storage History which displays a list of all the USB storage devices which have connected to your system.

And while the simple viewer allows you to browse all these details at a click, you can also save them to an HTML report for later reference, if appropriate.

Please note, while OSForensics is entirely free, the program will attempt to install a browser toolbar during the setup process. If that's not what you want then pay attention during installation, choose the Custom Install option when it becomes available, and clear the appropriate checkboxes to make sure you only install what you need.

History Viewer is a simple tool which can give you more information about what's been happening recently on your PC.

What have people been doing online, for instance? History Viewer can detail the URL history, address bar, cookies, downloads and more, for IE, Firefox and Chrome.

The program can highlight plenty of Windows-related histories, too. In a click or two you can view recently opened documents, the searches you've made, the programs you've launched, and more.

There's even a USB Storage History which displays a list of all the USB storage devices which have connected to your system.

And while the simple viewer allows you to browse all these details at a click, you can also save them to an HTML report for later reference, if appropriate.

Please note, while OSForensics is entirely free, the program will attempt to install a browser toolbar during the setup process. If that's not what you want then pay attention during installation, choose the Custom Install option when it becomes available, and clear the appropriate checkboxes to make sure you only install what you need.

Navigating files and folders in Windows has – it’s true – become easier with each successive release, but there’s still one major problem that’s never been addressed by Microsoft: the single folder view. Despite the existence of the Favorites Bar, copying or moving files from one folder to another usually involves opening two separate folder windows.

You then manually have to manually browse to the source and destination folder before you can drag files between them.
File explorer tools are ten-a-penny, with the most notable improvement being that you can view two or even four folders at once in single window, making copying and navigating a quick and easy affair. Multi Commander only offers a choice of single or dual panes for viewing folders, but you can open multiple tabs in each window, allowing you to create shortcuts to favourite folders that you can easily switch between for file management purposes.

A large number of buttons – all customisable - sit underneath the two panes giving you access to shortcuts, selection tools (such as images or MP3 files), system tools and various folder-based tweaks, like being able to hide DLLs from view. It also comes with built-in capabilities for accessing the Registry, viewing remote folders via FTP and opening a range of compressed archives, including 7zip, RAR and TAR in addition to Zip.

There are some useful tools thrown in for good measure: manage file and folder permissions, forcibly end stubborn processes, pack and unpack archives and create symbolic links and junctions in addition to regular shortcuts. There are also basic media management tools and a built-in file viewer for peeking at the code behind a file, all adding up to a tool that is well on its way to becoming your one-stop shop for all matters file-related.

The program interface is fully customisable, but a little drab and overwhelming for our liking in its default state – however, there’s little doubting its raw power and potential, and the fact it’s now free makes it a tool well worth checking out, although the author has warned it may revert to a paid-for license in the future. 

AIDA64 is a powerful system information, benchmarking and diagnostic tool that can provide a host of information about the current state of your PC.

The program is able to tell you a great deal about your PCs hardware, for instance, without you having to open the case. Motherboard model, CPU type and speed, chipset details, memory speeds, BIOS date, there's plenty of useful information to explore.

Maybe you're planning on overclocking your system? A helpful Overclock page details your current CPU clock, multiplier, FSB speed, QPI clock, GPU clocks and more.

And the Sensor page will keep you up-to-date on your current system temperatures (motherboard, CPU, GPU, GPU memory and drives, if your hardware supports this), fan speeds, voltages and more.

AIDA64 isn't just about hardware, though. It can also tell you about your current Windows installation, running processes, system drivers, services and more. Configuration details on offer include startup programs, scheduled tasks and so on. And a handy Licences page is even able to display product keys for many supported programs, useful as an easy way to back these up.

And you also get some very capable benchmarks to measure the speed of your CPU, RAM or disks.

Please note, the trial version of AIDA64 obscures some information in its reports. If you're looking for product keys, for instance, some will be displayed in full, others will be only partially available ("Y2666-[ TRIAL VERSION ]"). Purchasing a licence will remove this restriction, allowing you to see the complete report.

AIDA64 v2.20 is a minor upgrade and ships with these new features:

-OpenCL GPGPU Stress Test
-Support for Intel Atom “Cedarview” processors
-Support for Intel Core “Ivy Bridge” APUs and Intel 7-Series chipsets
-ACPI 5.0 and OpenCL 1.2 support
-GPU details for AMD Radeon HD 7970 and nVIDIA GeForce GT 640

Many people are happy to stick with the default browser set up when they fire up their computer for the first time, which means Internet Explorer if you’re a Windows user and Safari if you’re on an Apple Mac. Both browsers have improved massively in recent years, but part of that improvement is down to the growth in rival browsers like Google’s open-source alternative.

Chrome is no longer the young upstart it once was, and its pioneering spirit is often forgotten in the mists of time. It was Chrome’s sleek tab-driven interface with minimal real estate that was adopted by Firefox and the recent IE9. Chrome was the first to provide a resource-friendly browser that loaded quickly and didn’t suck the life out of your system, although again the competition has now caught up – and in some cases – surpassed its achievements.

Oh, Chrome was also the first to adopt a rapid release cycle, so if you’re fed up with a new browser number appearing in the About menu every few months, you can thank Google for that too.

Chrome may no longer look like the dazzling young starlet, but it more than holds its own against the competition. It’s still quick to load, quick to perform and easy to use. It bundles the Flash plug-in so you don’t have to download it separately and the browser sync function makes it easy to back up and sync your settings across multiple computers.

While the competition has definitely caught up, Chrome has enough going for it to keep existing users happy supporting the browser that has led to so many improvements in the way we view and access the web.

Chrome 16 is now stable.

The big news with Google Chrome 16 is multi-user support, first announced almost 12 months ago. User profiles aren’t linked to your computer’s built-in user accounts, but accessed – and switched – within Chrome itself. New profiles can be simple off-line affairs tied to that computer or synced with a Google account.

Multi-users is accessible from the Personal section under Chrome’s Options. Clicking New User opens a new window with an icon in the top left-hand corner indicating which user is currently browsing using that window. Multiple windows containing different users can be opened at once, while accounts can be configured to sync with a Google account, be renamed and have their identifying icon changed.

More information about the v16 release, including details of new multi-user support, can be found in the official blog.

Windows Repair is a portable tool which can help you get a damaged PC working again, useful if for example you've just removed a stubborn malware infection and now your system is seriously misbehaving.

The program's tabbed interface first walks you through some basic recovery steps. There are pointers to some free antivirus tools, for instance, and buttons to check your hard drive for errors, run the System File Checker, and create or restore a System Restore point.

For the real power here, though, click Start Repairs, select "Custom Mode" and click Start. And here you'll see options to reset Registry and File permissions, re-register system files, remove system policies commonly set by malware, and repair WMI, your firewall, IE, Hosts file, Winsock and DNS cache, and more. Just check the boxes next to the repair you'd like to carry out, click Start and Windows Repair will fix the selected problems for you.

There's no doubt that Windows Repair includes some powerful options which may be able to help you fix all kinds of odd Windows issues.

However, this tool can also cause plenty of problems of its own. So choosing to "Repair Winsock", for instance, might get your internet connection working, but could also break some low-level network-related application, such as a firewall. Reinstalling these programs should get them running again, but it's still best to be cautious: apply the Windows Repair tweaks one at a time, and only when you're completely sure they're necessary.