Microsoft’s free PC Advisor (download here) falls into the ‘does no harm and just might help’ category. I would recommend it to friends and family who find their computer is having problems. Hey, it can’t hurt.

I downloaded it (here) and installed it all of my Vista 64 and XP machines. I run a pretty tight ship so I wasn’t expecting much. As you can see from the pictures below, it recommended I take certain actions to speed up my PC, clean things up, update software etc.

I opted to let it do many of recommended actions (click the ‘fix it’ button to take action) but not others. For example, I let it remove temporary cache files but didn’t let it enable UAC or turn on the software firewall, each of which I had deliberately disabled.

Ironically, the best recommendation it made for my XP laptop was to remind me that the abysmal Adobe Acrobat bloatware was still installed. It recommended an update. Having previously moved to the much lighter, faster, terrific and free pdf reader Foxit Reader, I removed Acrobat completely.

How to Use PC Advisor

• Create a System Restore Point: As a rule I always create a system restore point before downloading/installing any new software so that I can recover to my previous state if something goes wrong.
• Download the PC Advisor: You can download PC Advisor by clicking here.
• Install and Run
• Choose the PC Checkup Option: Your computer will be scanned as shown below (click picture for larger view).

PC Advisor Performing a Checkup
(click for larger view)

• View the Report & Take Action: You’ll get a list of suggested actions. Clicking on any item opens up a more detailed description and provides the “Fix It” button for you to click if you want the software to take the suggested action.

PC Advisor Results / ‘Fix It’ Screen
(click for larger view)

• Adjust the Settings: The default installation setting loads PC Advisor whenever your PC starts. That could be good for people that frequently have problems and want constant scanning. I prefer to run scans periodically rather than constantly running and chewing up cycles. To adjust the utility’s settings, right click on it’s icon in the task bar, then left click on the “Microsoft PC Advisor Settings” option to open the settings screen shown below.

PC Advisor Settings Screen
(click for larger view)

Adjust the settings to your preference and click ‘Apply’.

I hope you find the utility useful.

How I long for the old days of DOS commands. It was so easy in those days to rename groups of files. X-Tree was (and still is) my all time favourite Swiss-army knife utility for the PC for this kind of thing. Though the developers tried, X-Tree never made the move from DOS to Windows successfully.

The Problem – Cryptic Digital Camera File Names

The most common need for file renaming these days is to properly name digital photos. My Cannon Elf creates thousands of .jpg files that look like this: IMG_1894.jpg. What the heck is that? I want to rename groups of photos by the event they depict (eg: Dad’s 77th Birthday 1.jpg).  While there are ways of renaming groups of files in Windows Explorer (see here for example) the method is painful and error prone – I screwed up many a photo file name using this method.

The Easy and Free Solution – Ante Renamer

Along comes the free utility, Ant Renamer – available for download here. In seconds it can rename dozens/hundreds of IMG_### files, for example, to appropriate names reflecting the occasion they represent. It works in both Vista and Windows XP.

While not a terribly user friendly program, but it is quite functional. You can, of course, rename groups of files, entire directories or groups of files in directories and subdirectories. There are several other renaming options that, among other things, allow you to:

• Change extensions
• Replace character strings within file names by others
• Insert character strings into file names
• Move characters
• Delete characters
• Enumeration
• Name creation with mp3’s Tag (ID v1.1)
• Name creation with file’s last modified date and time
• Random names creation
• Case change (uppercase, lowercase, first letter of each word in uppercase, …)
• Take names from a list/file

Demo – Star Wars Force Unleashed Pictures

Below I demonstrate an example of my most common use – digital picture renaming. 

I took more than 100 pictures while reviewing Star Wars the Force Unleashed (review coming soon). As you can see,  ended up with a directory full of pictures named IMB_1882.jpg through to IMB_2015.jpg:

Next I started Ant Renamer and dragged and dropped the directory where I had copied those pictures (N:\WP\video games\Star Wars Force Unleashed) onto the open Ant Renamer window.

Note: In Vista or XP, left click on the desired directory in the directory tree. Then hold and drag the directory onto the running Ant Renamer window. You can drag and drop entire directories as I did, or just a group of files from a directory, whatever you want.  Or you can open specific files or directories of files using Ant Renamer’s “Add files” or “Add folders” buttons (see picture below).

Here’s what the result will look like:

When all the files/directories that you want to rename are in the Ant Renamer window (see picture below):

• click on the ‘ actions’ button
• select the action you want – in this case I selected ‘string replacement’ (there are many other renaming options on the left as you can see)
• type in the string you want replaced (in this example ‘IMG_’)
• type in what you want it replaced with (in this example ‘Star Wars – Force Unleashed’); and then
• click on the “Go” button (circled in green below)

And poof, seconds later here’s how my renamed pictures looked in Windows Explorer:

Easy Peasy

Another Use

I have thousands of WordPerfect files I want to open in Word that require me to add the .wp extension first. When I do this manually Vista warns me each time that changing the file name extension could result big problems– Argh!! I know! Leave me alone Vista! Ant Renamer made a project that would have taken me days to complete, take just a few seconds.