Windows Half-Open Limit Fix is an utility program wrote by Dmitry, a Russian, that cracks, hacks or patches the system’s tcpip.sys file, the main file that provides TCP/IP communication protocol to change the maximum number of concurrent half-open outbound TCP connections, or connection attempts.

Microsoft started to implement a upper-bound limit on number of simultaneous half open outgoing TCP connection attempts in Windows XP SP2 and all future and new versions of Windows in order to slow the spreading rate of virus infection and malicious program and reduce the ability for computer to launch DDoS or DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

In Windows XP SP2 and SP3, the maximum concurrent half-open connect attempt limit is 10, and remains the same in Windows Vista and other Windows OS. When the limit is hit, new connection attempt will be put into queue. The limit also causes consequences of slow Internet download as speed of connection established to external peer computer is restricted. The limit especially and critically affect use of P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file sharing programs such as µTorrent, BitComet, eMule and P2PTV such as TVUplayer, PPStream, TVants, PPLive and many more.

Half-Open Limit Fix patches and fixes the tcpip.sys to unlock, clean and remove this limit, by increasing the maximum limit of half-open connection attempts allowed. It is fully automated, and works on all versions of tcpip.sys released.

To apply the patch using Half-Open Limit Fix, follow these steps:

1. Unpack and extract the ZIP archive to any folder.
2. Run the Half-Open Limit Fix program, i.e. Half-open_limit_fix_2.8.exe.
3. Select a new value for the limit for concurrent half-open outbound TCP connections. Valid value range from 1 to 255 (FF).
4. Click on Add to tcpip.sys button.
5. Restart computer.

Download: Windows Half-Open Limit Fix v2.8

Source: Windows Half-Open Limit Fix Home Page

Microsoft releases a free add-in to its Microsoft Office Suite named Microsoft Save as PDF that allows you to export and save to the PDF format in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send files as e-mail attachments in the PDF format in a subset of these programs.

The Microsoft Save as PDF works with all programs in the Microsoft Office Suite 2007, e.g. MS Office Access 2007, MS Office Word 2007, MS Office Excel 2007, MS Office PowerPoint 2007, MS Office InfoPath 2007, MS Office OneNote 2007, MS Office Publisher 2007 and MS Office Visio 2007.

Download: 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF

Instant Housecall Free Edition is a simple remote control application that grants you temporal access to a remote system, enabling you to see the desktop, move the mouse and open and close application just as if you were sitting in front of that computer.

Instant Housecall Free Edition is simple and easy to use. All you need to do is install a small client and create a specialist ID, which works as your username on the system. Then just tell your friends or whoever has asked you for support to visit the developer’s website and enter your username on the ‘Request for support’ form. They’ll also need to install a small client on their side, but it’s really easy, plus it can be uninstalled right away when the session is finished.

As soon as you get a call for request, Instant Housecall Free Edition will open up a window with the remote desktop on it. You’ll have total control over the remote system, including the ability to transfer files between both computers and a chat application to talk to your friends.

Download: Instant Housecall Free Edition

Source: Instant Housecall Home Page

IE7Pro is an add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes features and tweaks to make your IE more friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable.

IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins, MiniDM, Google sponsored search, IE Faster and many more power packed features.

You can also customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need.

Download: IE7pro 2.4.3

CEZEO Software released Disk Redactor that lets you securely erase any old or deleted files and prevent them from being recovered. All your private sensitive insecurely erased information will be wiped from free unused space on your drives to ensure complete data destruction.

The software utility is very simple to operate. Once download and install the program, just launch and it will bring you to the simple GUI. Click on ‘Wipe Disk’, select the respective folders and answer yes then it will wipe off all the unwanted data stored in it. You can also select the whole local drive to be deleted.

This tiny utility consumed less than 400kB only. It is good to have especially when you decide to sell off your PC without the intention to re-format or swap the whole hard disk.

Download: Disk Redactor 1.2

Source: Disk Redactor Home Page

Aston2 Menu is a feature-rich Windows start menu replacement with the enhanced functionality.
It is a component of the new line of Aston2 products which accumulating the best achievements of Aston1 and keeping up with the latest tendencies, turn your desktop into a yet more convenient and attractive environment. The menu is extremely flexible in terms of configuration. Every element of the menu can be tweaked and customized, thus letting one to create yet more convenient working area.

Features:

• Themes and skins support.
• Widgets support.
• Flexible configuration.




• Drag’n'Drop operations support, user friendly interface;
• Unicode support;
• Multi-language support;
• Plug-ins support.
• 64-bit systems support.

What’s new:

• Ability to edit Main Menu elements
• Ability to setup Toplist (Top Programs) elements
• Ability to update languages directly from the website
• Enhanced functionality of all the widgets
• Various GUI improvements (context menu icons, options)
• Improved compatibility with multimonitor systems
• Improved skin wizard
• Improved compatibility with Windows Vista
• Fixed several bugs that made their way to previous release

Download: Aston2 Menu 1.3

Source: Aston2 Menu Home Page

CloneDVD mobile converts your DVD movies quickly and easily into a format that your mobile equipment like Sony PSP, Apple iPod Video, iAudio X5, Creative Labs ZEN Vision can play. You can also convert your DVDs to other file formats, such as DivX, XviD, AVI, MP4, etc.

Changes:

• New: added MPEG2 re-encode/passthrough profiles
• Change: Framerate setting (NTSCFrameRate/PALFrameRate) allow exotic values like 30 FPS.
• Fix: resync issues with certain long-running movies




• Change: improved x264 encoding quality
• Change: improved handling of stage files (multi-pass encoding)
• Fix: some issues with subtitle decoding
• Fix: some minor issues with SVCD
• New: x264 featuring patch Psy-RD 0.6 by Jason Garrett-Glaser
• Several minor fixes and improvements

Download: CloneDVD Mobile 1.5.0.2 Beta

User Account Control (UAC) is a security infrastructure available in Microsoft Windows Vista that limits the users’ privileges on application software even for users who have administrator privileges assigned. Applications which have lower privileges need to get approved beforehand or get users’ authorization to higher privileges before it can install or run. This security feature can prevent malware from spreading or infecting the system.

UAC is an useful security feature to enhance the overall security system; however, it can be very disruptive. From time to time during the installation of an application, updating of a software or running of a program, this security will prompt you to assign rights or to approve some action. Besides, this feature may sometimes give a false sense of security.

Symantec introduced a new Norton UAC Tool, a replacement for Windows Vista UAC. Norton UAC tool operates in slightly different way from how Microsoft chooses to do it. It offers a “Do not ask me again” option on each prompt making it very easy for the user to squelch individual prompts without fully disabling UAC. Besides, the prompts from this tool provide a much clearer view of the ratings for the prompting application.

Download: Norton UAC Tool 1.0.11 Beta

Have you ever need to simultaneously open two different Microsoft Outlook profiles? ExtraOutlook v1.2 supports an extra Microsoft Outlook instance that can be connected to different Exchange server simultaneously in the same Windows PC system, enabling a more efficient multi-tasking environment for end users.

Simply unzip ExtraOutlook under C:\ExtraOutlook. In order to run it correctly, just open a command prompt and key in below command:

1. cd to C:\ExtraOutlook
2. Type this command line: extraoutlook.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.exe” /profile “Karl Gechlik”
3. Press enter to execute the command
4. Second instance of Outlook will be launched

Alternatively, you may copy below commands into notepad and save it as “ExtraOutlook.bat”:

cd\
cd c:\ExtraOutlook
extraoutlook.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.exe” /profile “Karl Gechlik”

Download: ExtraOutlook v1.2

The free, open source office suite, OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 final version, has finally been released with a lot of enhancements and improvements. This alternative to Microsoft Office suite has seen a touch-up of its graphical user interface to support Mac OS X and ODF 1.2. It has improved the spreadsheet collaboration, language selector, programmability, crop feature and many more.

OpenOffice office suite consists of a word processing application, a complete Excel compatible spreadsheet program and a PowerPoint like presentation software and a drawing program. Besides, it also allows users to save working files to PDF format. The features and functionality meet the competitive level of MS Office. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has indicated that he considered OpenOffice.org superior to what Google has to offer in terms of productivity solutions.

The new OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 supports both Microsoft Office binary file formats (.doc; .xls, .ppt, etc.) as well as MS Office files created with the latest Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). The flexibility and ability to support multiplatforms such as Windows, Linux, MacOS X (X11) and Solaris has gained this free office suite solution more popularity.

Download:
OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 Office Suite Final (Windows)