HDHacker backs up and restores Master Boot Records

The Master Boot Record (or MBR) of a hard drive contains the information your computer needs in order to know how to boot any operating systems installed on your system. In other words, if something happens to your MBR or BootSector, you could be left with an unbootable computer.

HDHacker is a Windows utility that lets you backup or restore your boot record in a snap. The standalone program can be run from your hard drive or a USB flash drive. The one thing it does require is a working Windows installation. So if you’ve accidentally locked yourself out of Windows, you’ll need to find a way back in before you can restore your MBR.

Fortunately if you have a Windows XP or Vista installation disc handy you can probably boot into recovery mode and try to fix or rebuild your MBR. But that’s not to say HDHacker is useless. For example, if you have a triple boot system running Windows XP, OpenSUSE Linux, and Ubuntu Linux, one of the Linux distributions probably wrote over your MBR with its own GRUB bootloader. If you try to uninstall Ubuntu and keep the other operating systems you might wind up with an unbootable system. The Windows XP installation disc can help you boot into Windows, but you might find yourself without a way to boot into OpenSUSE unless you use a program like HDHacker to restore the boot record.

At least that’s one example off the top of my head. If you can think of other uses for this program, let us know in the comments.

Recover deleted files with Undelete Plus

Overview:

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to restore accidentally deleted files. It can also recover files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted files within Windows using the Shift + Delete, and files that have been deleted from within a Command Prompt.

Features:

Undelete Plus allows the following tasks to be performed:

– Recovery of deleted files from NTFS/NTFS5, FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 volumes.

– Restoring deleted files on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2003, Windows Vista.

Review:

File recovery programs are everywhere these days but Undelete Plus stands from the pack with some well though out features. for starters after you have searched for salvageable files you can quickly sort the results by using the left pane tree view that shows the various types of files like text , pictures, word documents ,Etc. you can narrow the search even more by filtering the results by file name, modification date and size. tough the size field can only be filtered in kilobytes not in megabytes or gigabytes which is a shame. while testing Undelete Plus i found that it could indeed recover recently deleted files but you got to keep in mind that if some time has passed the recovery might be impossible or the file will be unusable after it has been recovered.
Undelete Plus comes with multi language support and doesn’t need installation to run so you can carry it with you all the time making this is a very handy tool. Available for all versions of Windows.

Get it at http://undelete-plus.com/

Recover keys for games that have been installed in Windows using Game Key Revealer

Overview:

Game Key Revealer, reveals the CD-Key and Serials for installed games on computer. If you lost legal CD-Keys or Serials of your purchased games, you can find them with Game Key Revealer.

Features:

– Displays over 500 games
– Save to Text or Word (Word XP/2003/2007 only)
– Print
– Displays for 64bit-Edition releases

Review:

Losing the CD/DVD key of your favorite game because you lost the box and didn’t save the key somewhere can be awful since there is no easy way to recover it. Game Key Revealer can prevent this by searching keys for games that are installed in Windows and save them in a text or word document. However if you lost the game box and you don’t have installed the game in your PC you are totally screwed so use Game Key Revealer before you loose your stuff.
Because i don’t have any games that use game keys in my system i couldn’t test Game Key Revealer properly but according to the creator it supports over 500 games by the most popular developers. So give Game Key Revealer a try in order to backup your game keys. Available for all versions of Windows.

Get it at http://cakirbey.googlepages.com/

Recover your software keys with SoftKey Revealer

Overview:

SoftKey Revealer, reveals the CD-Key and Serials for installed softwares on computer. It also saves your money and time, free and easy to use.

Features:

– Displays over 700 software products
– Save to Text or Word (Word XP/2003/2007 only)
– Print
– Displays for 64bit-Edition releases

Review:

If you visited my blog a couple of hours earlier you might have seen the post where i have talked about Game Key Revealer, well SoftKey Revealer is basically the same as Game Key Revealer except for software. With it you can see all the keys of the programs that you have installed in Windows and save them into a text file. It was able to sucessfuly show the key for the only commercial program that i have in Windows XP which is great! SoftKey Revealer supports over 700 software products so your favorite programs may be supported, i can’t be sure for certain tough. SoftKey Revealer is a good way of saving your software keys in case you loose them. Available for all Windows versions.

Get it at http://cakirbey.googlepages.com/softkeyrevealer

CD Recovery Toolbox Free will recover files from scratched CD/DVDs

Overview:

Recovery Toolbox for CD Free has been developed for recovering data from corrupted media of all types that are most common nowadays: CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. The program allows you to recover files of any types. The tool completely scans disks and saves as much information as possible. During the recovery process, Recovery Toolbox for CD Free uses a lot of different algorithms, which considerably increases the amount and quality of recovered data.

Features:

• Recovering corrupted data from all most common types of media for today
• Working with data that became corrupted both after a physical damage of the media and due to program errors
• Allowing the user to completely control the recovery process
• Giving the user as detailed report about the data recovery process as possible

Review:

CD Recovery Toolbox Free is a file recovery tool made specifically for optical media. Unlike the previously reviewed Copy Cat 2.0 CD Recovery Toolbox Free can select more than one file for recovery making the recovery process for whole CDs a lot less painful than with Copy Cat 2.0. CD Recovery Toolbox Free is easy to use and was able to recover files from a scratched CD that i have making this a good utility for recovering important files that otherwise would be lost forever. Available for all versions of Windows.

Get it at http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/cd.html