Your Back-to-School Windows Emergency Utility Kit

You never know what kind of nasty bugs you're going to catch when you get to college... and I don't mean meningitis and mono. Your computer is about to be besieged by viruses and spyware, and even if you avoid those things, four years of heavy use are going to make your poor PC want to curl up and die. Why not spend a few minutes this summer loading up a thumbdrive or a DVD with helpful utilities that can get you out of a scrape when things go south?

Here's what's on my "emergency disc." (Almost all of these apps are free or have free versions available.)

1. Anti-spyware - My old standbys, Ad-Aware, Spybot, and HijackThis. Keep Process Explorer handy here, as well, for advanced troubleshooting.
   
2. Antivirus - AOL Active VirusShield and AVG.
3. Data Recovery Tool - File Scavenger is affordable and works well, but other alternatives abound. (None of the major "undelete" utilities are free, sadly.)
   
4. CCleaner - This free tool can tidy up a hard drive as well as the registry.
   
5. Hard Drive Utilities - Download a sampling of tools from this website. The more the merrier.
   
6. Hot CPU Tester - Offers info about your system and can stress-test it to ferret out any errors.
7. MemTest86 - An old, but still useful, RAM testing tool.
8. ISO Recorder - This utility lets you burn your own CDs from ISO files, essential for creating many stand-alone utility discs like those mentioned at the bottom of this piece.
   
9. OpenOffice - Always handy in case you encounter a computer without productivity software, or if yours suddenly dies and your paper is due tomorrow.
10. Firefox - A web browser is essential, and IE might be inoperable.
    
11. Video Codecs - The ACE Mega Codecs Pack is invaluable and can let you play just about any video file type around.
12. Trillian - This instant messaging client works with all the major providers.
13. WinRAR - For dealing with compressed files when you encounter them.
    
14. Drivers for all known hardware (especially video drivers and networking drivers) on my machines.
    

I also keep a copy of the Ophcrack password cracker, the KillDisk hard drive wiper, a Knoppix CD, and the Ultimate Boot CD (preloaded with dozens of utilities) handy. All of these require their own discs to run.

Also, always make sure you have a copy of your computer's recovery disc (if you didn't get one with your PC, you can often burn one manually; check your computer's documentation), which can make system recovery far easier. A retail copy of Windows is OK, but only if a recovery CD is not available.

With these tools at the ready, you should be able to handle 90 percent of the problems you're likely to face, at least in software, and having them on disc makes it far easier to solve a problem vs. trying to download them later.

Got other suggestions for an emergency CD set? Let's hear 'em!