Microsoft Safety Scanner Download

Microsoft Safety Scanner is a free virus scan program that can be downloaded and run once, or as needed.  It can be downloaded from learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/safety-scanner-download.

Windows GodMode

 You can add use a “hidden” feature on Microsoft  Windows 7 and 8 PCs  that places customization settings in one location: GodMode. Here are the steps to create this:

On the Windows Desktop, right-click and select “New – Folder”.
Create a folder named “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}”.

Click on the new GodMode desktop icon:

You will see a list of Windows configuration settings ordered in functional groups:

There are no new features listed.  Instead, GodMode organizes settings from Control Panel and other settings into a single list.

You can sort by clicking on the column headings, or use a column filter by clicking on the column heading’s drop-down list.

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is available as a free program that emulates a portable flash drive, with 5 GB of free space available. Files and folders can be added to it. Your Windows Live account and password are used to maintain security for OneDrive. Additional password protection for confidential files is recommended.

Once installed, the OneDrive Synch Engine Host program remains loaded in memory and appears as a Windows tray icon. Files are synchronized from your Windows 8 PC’s folder C:\Users\UserName\OneDrive (or C:\Users\UserName\SkyDrive) up to the Microsoft OneDrive servers. Any additional PCs that have OneDrive installed with your Windows Live account will have access to the same set of files. This is an easy way to back up and share files between PCs.

You can log in to OneDrive to access your files at onedrive.live.com.

OneDrive is intended for personal and home use.  Microsoft has a separate corporate product: OneDrive for Business.

You may be able to recover a deleted OneDrive file or folder from the OneDrive Recycle Bin.

Competitors to OneDrive include Google Drive, Apple iCloud, and Dropbox.

Free Database Development Software

 Some of the most commonly used free databases include:

Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition only runs on Windows-based PCs, and user database size is limited to 10 GB. This is radically smaller than the paid versions of SQL Server, at 524 petabytes.

MySQL is the popular open source database that is now owned by Oracle. It can run on Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows operating systems. Paid commercial versions with additional support are also available.

Oracle Database Express Edition runs on Windows and Linux operating systems, but the database size is limited.  It can be downloaded from here.

Oracle SQL Developer is a free integrated development that makes it easier to administer both paid and free versions of Oracle databases.

Notepad++ free text editor

Notepad++ is a popular open source editor for text files (TXT, HTML, CSV, XML, etc.), which can be downloaded from notepad-plus-plus.org.  For use of very large text files (1 GB or more), you may wish to purchase commercial software such as Ultra Edit.

On startup, Notepad++ will automatically load the last file used in memory. To turn off this feature, select Settings >> Preferences >> Misc. Tab. “Remember current session for next launch” should be unchecked.