kikizas.net¹

usb applications

programs² | usb apps³ | links⁹

haq | applications | batch files | autohotkey

This is a selection of freeware and OSS Windows programs that run from USB keydrives with full functionality. The HAQ addresses hypothetically asked questions. All programs listed work fine for us from a USB keydrive. However, some things may depend on particular configurations, while some information may not be accurate. Your feedback is appreciated.

Please note that some freeware programs are free only for home/personal/non-commercial use. For details, see licences. OSS programs usually come with no such restrictions.

launchers

• AutoHotkey » 0.2, u0, os, ∩. 200508: Launch apps by hotkeys, carry your abbreviations with you, do almost anything.
• PStart » 0.6. 200505: Very convenient, with lots of features. By PEGTOP. 200509: Upd. desc. for v. 2.0.4.

file utilities

• 7za » 0.6, os. CLI version of 7-Zip. For .zip and .rar archives you can also use A43 or freeCommander.
• A43 » 0.7. File manager w/ text editor, hex viewer, zip/unzip, unrar, dual-pane mode. By B. G. Miller. 200607: Upd. link.
• Copy Handler » 0.6, os, u0. 200510: Handles file transfers. Several l10ns, Chinese, English, Polish Help. By Ixen Gerthannes.
• Flexible Renamer » 1.4. 200511: File/folder renamer. English and Japanese GUI and help. Japanese page » By Naru.
• freeCommander » 1.2, ∩. Dual-pane file manager, zips/unzips, unrars, makes sfx files, wipes, splits, searches in zip/rar/cab archives, has visual filters, custom hotkeys, custom layouts, makes/verifies MD5 checksums, and more. Several l10s. Marek Jasinski. 200509: Upd. desc. for v. 2005.09.
• PC Inspector File Recovery » 5.9, ∩. 200507: Wider in functionality than Restoration. Restores partitions also. Several l10ns. By PC Inspector.

  Do not run from the drive or partition of the deleted data.

• Restoration » 0.4. To restore deleted files: must-have. By Brian Kato. Alt. link: www.snapfiles.com
• Splitter Light » 0.1. Friendly splitter and rejoiner of files and directories. By Martin Stoeckli.
• Unstoppable Copier » 0.1. Copy files from damaged media (not damaged files from healthy media). By Roadkil.
• UPX » 0.2, os. CLI tool to compress executables. You can save space and make programs load faster. By Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and László Molnár.
• XYplorer » 1.6, ∩. 200507: File manager w/ tabs, powerful search & preview, renaming, directory/file info export, and more. By Donald Lessau. 200603: Gone shareware. Last freeware version » Alt. link »

security, privacy

• avast! vCleaner » 0.4. Cleans distinguished worms and viruses. By avast!
• AVERT Stinger » 0.9. Same as above. By McAfee.
• ClamWin Portable » 14.6, os. 200702: On-demand antivirus scanner. Packaged by John Haller.
• KeePass » 0.4, u1, os. Store/manage/autocomplete usernames/passwords. Many features, excellent documentation. Can store everything (including the encrypted database) in its directory. Also for PocketPC, Linux, Mac OS X. By Dominik Reichl. 200607: Upd. info.
• LockNote » 0.3, os. 200601: Notepad to protect your notes with strong encryption. By Steganos. Alt. link: sourceforge.net/projects/locknote
• TrueCrypt » 0.1, os. 200507: On-the-fly encryption of partitions and virtual disks. Can be used from a USB stick in “traveller mode”. Several l10s. By the TrueCrypt Foundation. Lock your USB Drive up » is a tutorial by Juan D.

  TrueCrypt suffers from a couple of limitations for portable use:

  It does not work on Win 9x. You need a 2000/XP/2003 system to access your files.

  In traveller mode, it needs administrative priviledges to work. (Unless an instance is already installed on the host system. Then, the encrypted volumes will be managed automatically by the local instance).

internet

• µTorrent » 0.1. 200509: Tiny BitTorrent client w/ amazing set of features. By Ludvig Strigeus.

  For portable use, “copy settings.dat (located in %AppData%\uTorrent) to the same folder as uTorrent.exe”.

• Abyss Web Server X1 » 0.6, ∩. 200509: Easy to set up. Many l10ns. By Aprelium Technologies.

  For portability, put a dot for root path in abyss.conf. For PHP, move the PHP dir in the Abyss dir, and adapt the path in abyss.conf.

• d3 Traceroute » 1.6, u0. 200511: Tracerouter, whois, port scanner. English, German. By Holger Lembke.
• FileZilla » 3.5, u1, os. (S)FTP client. On first run it asks whether to store settings in the registry or in its directory.
• Firefox Portable » 16.2, os. Fully functional. Read the instructions! Packaged by John Haller.
• HFS (Http File Server) » 0.6, os. 200511: HTTP server to transfer files. By Massimo Melina. 200607: Upd. info for v. 2.0.
• Lynx » 3.2, os, ∩. 200510: The text browser. Help included. About Lynx » Installer made by csant.
• Miranda IM » r2, 1.7, os. Instant Messenger for all major protocols. 200612: Or get the package by PortableApps.com »
• NetMeter » 0.3, ∩. 200603: Network bandwidth monitor. By ReadError.
• nPOP » 0.2, os. 200506: Tiny emailer, supports multiple accounts. By Tomoaki Nakashima. (Suggested by Mervin McDougall)

  nPOP and SSL/TSL

  nPOP does not have native support for SSL/TSL, which is required by some providers, e.g., Gmail. To add this, see: groups.yahoo.com/group/npopsupport/message/764. For SSL/TSL support out of the box, use Thunderbird Portable.

• Ping Plotter » 0.3, ∩. Tracerouter. By PingPlotter.
• PuTTy » 0.4, os. Free Telnet/SSH Client, with xterm terminal emulator. Settings are stored in registry. Peter Garner » suggests a string of parameters. The alternative, by the author himself, Simon Tatham, is a batch file to import settings, start the program and then export and delete them from the registry: Storing configuration in a file »
• Skype » 14.1, u1, ∩. 200511: Since v. 1.4.

  1. Make a directory in the keydrive, say: Skype, and copy Skype.exe there.
  2. Make a subdirectory there, say: Skypedata, and start Skype with the parameters:
  3. /datapath:Skypedata /removable — Example. Source: share.skype.com.

• Sylpheed » 22.0, u1, os. 200512: Email client. Lighter than Thunderbird, no Bayesian filter yet. By Hiroyuki Yamamoto.

  Use parameter: --configdir mydata (see Readme).

• Thunderbird Portable » 8.9, os. Email client. Packaged by John Haller. Read the instructions!
• TYPSoft FTP Server » 1.0, os. 200511: Friendly FTP server. Site/Help in English, French, several l10ns. By Marc Bergeron.
• Uniform Server » 17.3, os. 200511: WAMP package. By the Uniform Server Development Team.

text & productivity

• AbiWord Portable » 13.7, os. 200510: Word processor. Packaged by John Haller. (It does not like large Word documents.)
• BDV Notepad » 0.4. 200511: Enhanced notepad. Several l10ns, help in English, Spanish, site in English, Russian. By BaDeVlad.
• ClipX » 0.1, u1, ∩. Alt. link » 200512: Since v. 1.0.3.8. “[T]iny clipboard history manager” w/ good handling of multiple alphabets. By Francis Gastellu.
• EssentialPIM » 1.0. 200506: Portable PIM. Exports in various formats, has a notes organizer w/ rtf (for formatting, bulleted lists, etc.), several l10ns, and Help file. By EssentialPIM Ltd. 200509: v. 1.6 has a small but distracting rotating ad of the Pro version. 200601: New in portable v. of 1.7, 2006-01-13: if installed on a flash drive, it uses portable settings; otherwise, it uses non-portable settings.
• Foxit Reader » r1, 2.8. Fast, unintrusive, reads all .pdf files, offers 15% of Adobe Reader’s functionality, which is what 95% of people need. Text is not rendered as clearly. Stores settings in registry. By FOXIT Software.
• KeyNote » 2.2, os. Powerful notes organizer. It uses tree form and tabs. By Marek Jedlinski.

  How to open your portable notes on startup: If KeyNote is, for example, in X:\Apps\KeyNote, and your file is X:\docs\myfile.knt, go to Tools, Configuration Options, KeyNote files, select Load specific file, and type: ..\..\docs\myfile.knt

• MemPad » 0.1. 200510: Like Treepad/KeyNote, w/ basic functionality, encryption in RC4, English and German Help. By Horst Schaeffer.
• MoinMoin DesktopEdition » 7.1, os. 200512: Self-contained package of the wiki software, can be used as a PIM. Unpack and run. Packaged by Alexander Schremmer.
• Notepad++ » 1.5, os. 200511: Since v. 3.3. Scintilla-based editor. Some notable features: custom hotkeys, folding, highlighting of found strings, macros, regex, split view, tabs. Many l10ns, Help file. Install w/ portable settings, or use the zip file. By Don HO.
• NoteTab Light » 2.8. 200506: Text editor full of tools and utilities. By Fookes Software.
• OpenOffice Portable » 138.0, os. Full office suite. Packaged by John Haller. Read the Known Issues.
• PDFTK Builder » 2.1, os, ∩. 200512: Cut/merge pdf files, add passwords, and more. By Angus Johnson.

  It is a graphical interface for the CLI tool pdftk: www.accesspdf.com/pdftk

• Replace in Files » 0.1, ∩. 200511: Does recursive scan, optionally case sensitive, can keep backups. No regex, or replacement over multiple lines. (We know of no portable GUI tool that does that.) By Emurasoft.
• ShirusuPad » 0.5. 200509: Innovative notekeeper. Extract to any directory. By Daniel Crkvencic. (Via www.essential-freebies.de)
• SciTE » 1.0, os. Advanced text/source editor. By Neil Hodgson.

  SciTE reads user-specific configuration files and abbreviations (abbrev.properties) from the user profiles directory. You can change this by changing the varialbe SciTE_HOME by means of a batch file that changes the variable SciTE_HOME (thanks to Neil Hodgson). In the first example below the batch file is in the directory of SciTE.exe; in the second it is in the root directory, and the path to SciTE.exe is X:\Apps\SciTE\SciTE.exe

  set SciTE_HOME=.
  start SciTE.exe
  ------
  set SciTE_HOME=.\Apps\SciTE
  start .\Apps\SciTE\SciTE.exe
        

• Stickies » 0.6, ∩. 200511: Make a file stickies.ini in its directory, or copy it from the user profile. See Help, Directory Usage. By Tom Revell.
• TextDiff » 0.7, os. 200511: Drag & drop, in-place editing, merging, search & replace. By Angus Johnson.
• TextHarvest » 3.1, ∩. 200508: “Reads files and copies the information you want, based on a list of text strings you specify. You can keep certain lines of data while skipping others”. Includes Help with examples. By Pinnacle Software.
• TreePad Lite » r1, 0.4. Friendliest notes organizer. Uses tree form. Stores settings in registry. By Henk Hagedoorn. 200503: Full portability is planned for future editions!
• UK’s Kalender » 1.0. 200602: Nice calendar and task scheduler. Site and help in German and English. By Ulrich Krebs. Suggested by Roman.
• Win32Pad » 0.1, u1. Fast, advanced notepad. Help included. Settings kept in user profile, unless win32pad.ini is found in the program’s directory. By Gennady Feldman. 200511: Upd. desc. for v. 1.5.9.1. 200608: Supports Unicode since v. 1.5.10.
• Wisterer HX » 7.0, u0. 200511: Reminders, calendar, adress and phone book. Exports in various formats, imports from OE and Palms. Data are saved in .xml format. USB version available. German only. By Michael Maier.

music & multimedia

• 1by1 » 0.1, ∩. The directory player. By Martin Pesch.
• Burrrn » 2.1, ∩. 200510: “[F]or burrrning [sic] audio CDs with CD-Text from various audio files.” Loveable! Many l10ns. By Gambit.
• CDex 1.60++ » 3.1, os. To rip and encode CDs. Modification by tycho.
• GiveMeTac » 1.0, ∩. 200510: Métronome virtuel. Adjustable volume, beat, beat sound. English, French. By Graphys. Via www.libellules.ch/dotclear.
• IrfanView » 1.3, ∩. Image viewer/editor. The extra plugins take 6.33 MB (v. 3.95). By Irfan Skiljan.
• mp3DirectCut » 0.2, ∩. 200508: Cut/copy/paste mp3 files, change the volume. Easy, reliable, quick. By Martin Pesch.
• oggdropXPd » 0.6, u0, os. 200506: “A drag-and-drop Ogg Vorbis encoder/decoder/player for the eXPerienced user. Features include compression from lossless files (Monkeys Audio, LPAC, FLAC and OptimFROG), auto-tagging, renaming of encoded files, setting of advanced encoder parameters, use of VorbisGain tags on decode, Playlist (.m3u) creation, and others.” By John Edwards.
• PhotoFiltre » 3.2, l1, u0, ∩. Friendly, efficient image retoucher. By Antonio da Cruz.
• VLC media player » 16.3, os. By default stores personal settings and the plugins cache in the user profile.

  Use parameters --no-plugins-cache and --config="vlcrc". Command Line Documentation »

• XnView » 3.1, r2. Image viewer/editor. In Options/Install there is option to store settings portably. This setting is stored in the registry. By Pierre Gougelet.

system tools & utilities

• BurnCDCC » 0.2. 200507: Burn an ISO file to a CD or DVD. By TeraByte Unlimited.
• CPU-Z » 0.7. 200508: Gathers info about CPU, motherboard, and memory. By Franck Delattre.
• Directory Lister » 0.2, u0. 200506: Powerful and friendly, exports to .html, .txt, .csv. Help, many l10ns. Comes w/ installer or in .rar archive. By KRKsoft. 200511: Upd. for v. 0.9.
• DirMS » 0.2. 200507: CLI defragmenter for NT/2000/XP. Get v. 1.2.20, not the “Service and GUI”. By Leroy Dissinger.

  Example, to defragment C: X:\Apps\Tools\dirms c -q. Omitting -q makes the process “glacially slow”.

• Easy Cleaner » 2.6. For registry cleaning use Regseeker. For everything else, Easy Cleaner. Many l10s. By Toni Helenius.
• Faber Toys » 1.1, ∩. Alt. link » 200509: “A system utility, mainly developed for power users who want to know what’s going on in their computers. It may also be used by programmers as a tool for tracking their applications.” By Fabio Vescarelli.

  For languages other than English, adapt Config.cfg. E.g., LanguagePath=.\Language\Italian.dat

• i.Disk » 0.3. 200506: “Ever wanted to know where all the used space on your hard disk was hiding?” By Matthew Allen.
• ISOBurn » 0.2, ∩. 200506: To burn CD images. Also erases CD-RWs. By Dirk Paehl.
• LC ISO Creator » 0.1. 200507: “Creates ISO files from CD/DVD-ROM”. Efficient, friendly. By Lucersoft.
• NiftyWindows » 0.4, os. 200508: Advanced handling of windows, and more. Try it! By Enovatic-Solutions.
• RawWrite for Windows » 0.2, os. 200505: “The essential utility for creating boot and root disks for installing Linux”. Make images from floppies and floppies from images, backup floppies as images, send floppies as attachments. By John Newbigin.

  You can keep images in the keydrive (e.g., DBAN: dban.sourceforge.net, FreeDOS: www.freedos.org, Memtest86+: www.memtest.org, a 98 boot disk etc.) and make floppies as you need them.

• RegSeeker » 0.3. Good registry cleaner. By Thibaud Djian and Russ Schwenkler.
• SIW (System Information for Windows) » 1.2. 200509: By Gabriel Topala.
• TinyResMeter » 0.1. 200508: Realtime info about several resources. By PESoft.
• Unknown Devices » 0.9, os. What those unknown devices in Device Manager are? By Mike Catfish Moniz.
• WinAudit » 0.5. Detailed system report exportable in several formats. For non-default settings a file is made in Temp: winaudit.ini. By Parmavex Services. 200510: Upd. desc. for v. 2.0 Beta 2.
• WinSnap Portable » 0.2. 200702: “makes screenshots better”. By NTWind Software.
• XVI32 » 1.0. 200603: Simple hex editor w/ detailed help. By Christian Maas.

miscellaneous

• AddUp 1 » 0.1, ∩. 200511: Flexible tape calculator, supports complex expressions. Help included. By Orefa.com.
• ColorCop » 0.2. 200509: “Color picker for web designers and programmers.” Help included. By Jay Prall.
• Converber » 0.2. 200506: Converter with tons of units. Accepts custom conversions. Many languages & Help file. By Xyntec Automation Inc.
• ConvertAll » 7.1, os, ∩. 200511: Supports arbitrary compound units! E.g., from inches/day to kilometres/year. By Doug Bell.
• QuickDic » 18.7. 200508: English-German, German-English dictionary. English, German Help. By Stefan Büdenbender.
• Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection » 1.5, os. 200510: One-player puzzle games. Help included. Unpack to any directory.

  The original meaning of “portable” here is “cross-platform”: available for Win, OS X, Palm OS, and Unix.

• TheSage » 21.2, ∩. 200508: English dictionary/thesaurus w/ tabs and advanced search. By Franc Morales and Leah Gilner. Alt. link: snapfiles.com/get/thesage.html. 200510: Upd. info for v. 1.0.6.

  Clipboard monitoring, security and privacy

  TheSage monitors the clipboard and stores every piece of text you copy in its history. This is a convenient feature, but can pose security issues. In Options, History, you can select: Delete History and Session info on exit.