Believe it or not: Our digital life is actually messed up. Every now and then we face several problems with our computers: data loss, hardware failures, malware attacks and what not?



Photo Credit: anadah

Listed below are six different nightmarish situations and six different programs that can solve them. Don’t overlook them. They’ll save you tons of time and frustration when there’s something wrong.



DriverMax: When You Don’t Have Backups of Device Drivers

You don’t have a back up of your device drivers. Or your branded computer didn’t come with them. That’s when DriverMax comes in handy.

You can use it to backup installed drivers on your computer which can be later restored when your computer is messed up or when you’ve reinstalled Windows. DriverMax can also update the drivers installed on your computer.

I give it a 5 on 5 for its ease of use. It just does perfectly what it says. Update: Read this warning comment if you’re going to install this tool.

Jelly Bean Key Finder: When You Need To Recover the Windows Product Key

Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder retrieves the serial number of your current Windows installation, even if it is unbootable. Keep a copy of it so that it’ll come for good use when you reinstall Windows.

It can also display serial keys of your Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office installations so that the next time you’re installing them you need not hunt torrents online for keygens or cracks.

If you want to a better tool, try SoftKey Revealer that can recover keys from over 700 software programs. There’s no support here for MS programs though.

SnadBoy Revelation: When You Need To Recover A Forgotten Password

You’ve got the password hidden behind the dots on a webpage/window. But you don’t know what that password is. That’s when SnadBoy Revelation becomes a lifesaver of sorts.

You just need to drag a â€˜Circled+’ icon to the text box where the password is and you’ll instantly see the password in the app’s main window. It seems like intimidating at first try, but the tool is actually quite easy to use.

Last week, I was able to recover my network’s password that I had entered on my modem configuration page using this tool. So you never really know when it could come handy.

Zero Assumption: When You Accidentally Formatted Your Camera’s Card

If you just recovering from a shock seeing all the photos that you took in a recent event wiped out entirely, don’t panic. Get this tool called Zero Assumption that promises to recover most of the deleted photos in your memory card.

As mentioned here, the entire process takes just a few clicks but you’ve to keep your fingers crossed for the photos to be recovered intact.

Although image recovery is free, you’ll have to pay for additional features.

There are tons of other recovery software available in the market, but Zero Assumption seems to be doing particularly well with photographs.

Ophcrack: When You’ve Forgotten Your Windows Password

If you’re unable to login to Windows because you’ve forgotten the administrator password, give Ophcrack Live CD a spin. It can crack even very tough passwords in a matter of minutes.

The GUI may not be impressive, but very functional. Real time graphs display the progress in the main window.

You gotta have a copy of this because you never know when your memory will fail!

Neo’s Safekeys: When You Suspect Keylogging Activity In Your Computer

You can easily prevent Keyloggers from logging your keystrokes by using Neo’s Safekeys. Once run, the program displays an on-screen keyboard that you can use to type in your password. You’ll then have to drag the asterisks in the keyboard to the text area where you want to input them.

You didn’t type anything and nothing got logged! You can successfully avoid keyloggers just by using this very light weight tool.

Besides all this, having tools like UBCD and also GParted Live CD can also end up useful sometime or the other. Has any program saved you from any such mess in the future.

Also, please check out our other big list of 37 Windows Utilities. If you’ve got any comments, please voice them in the comments section below. Do tell us of your favourite tools – the ones that saved you when you got digital nightmares!