My list of useful softwares after a fresh Windows (re)-installation

My laptop came pre-installed with Windows 8, was upgraded to 8.1 and finally to Windows 10 (and the Anniversary update), so, as you can guess, it became slow and unstable after multiple software installations and removals.

So, today, I decided to proceed to a clean re-installation of it and felt like I wanted to share the list of software that I always include on my computers.

re-installing Windows 10

I hope it will be useful for some of you.

Here is my list of recommended software (or at least the one that I always use):

• 7-ZIP, archiving open-source software (compress / uncompress zip, rar...) http://www.7-zip.org/
• AdBlock Plus a browser extension to block invasive ads https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb
• CCleaner (Free version) to clean my computer from temporary files times to times https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download
• CutePDF writer to "print" documents in PDF format http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
• Keepass to save all my passwords and its chromeIPass Google Chrome extension to fill in the passwords automatically when I am browsing http://keepass.info/
• Google Chrome browser. Best choice for me as I am using Gmail or Inbox to retrieve my e-mails https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html
• Microsoft Office Professional (currently v 2013). I also like OpenOffice and LibreOffice but I just can't exchange documents with customers without it. https://products.office.com
• NotePad++ one of the best text editors https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
• Skype voice and video calls http://www.skype.com
  
• Spybot (free version) to clean my computer from malwares, adwares... https://www.safer-networking.org
• Slack a messaging app to communicate better than mails with my team and even with some customers https://slack.com/
• Synology's Cloud Station Drive to sync with my private and company cloud storage (like Google Drive or Dropbox if you have a Synology NAS) https://www.synology.com
• Unchecky a software to unckeck the unwanted sofwares that are bundled with others (Thanks Eric D. for pointing me to this one.) https://unchecky.com/
• VLC MediaPlayer, the best media player, it plays everything without the need for extra codecs and it's free http://get.videolan.org/

There are some other softwares that I'm using of course (like GIMP the open-source equivalent of Photoshop http://www.gimp.org , or other business specific tools) but these are the ones I always install on my computers.

I hope that you will find some interesting tools in this list.

Would you add another software to this list?

How to solve "Unable to start Photoshop CS6 - could not open a scratch file because the file is locked" (Windows)

Hello,
today I found a problem on a computer using Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Trying to launch the software throw an error:

I noticed that starting the software as an administrator was a workaround but it did not fix the issue.

To fix the problem try the following:

1. launch Photoshop as an administrator (Right click on the icon, run as Administrator)
2. Go to Preferences: CTRL+K
3. Go to "Performances"
4. Under "scratch disks" select another partition if you can
   
   
   
   
5. Click OK
6. Quit Photoshop and try starting it normally

That solved the problem for me.

I hope it will help you.

Why I uninstalled Viber from my Windows computer.

Today I decided to uninstall Viber from my computer.

Why? Because of two problems:

The first reason is that, when my computer resumes from standby, Viber never comes back online.

It is annoying because when you think you’re sending a message, it might take a few minutes before the software shows you that the messages where not send and asks you to retry.

The only way I found to solve this issue was to kill the Viber process and to open Viber again. It started with Windows 8, was still there after an upgrade to Windows 8.1 and it is still not solved under Windows 10.
Of course I tried to uninstall and reinstall multiple times and the software is up-to-date but it happens just all the time.

Support did not help. They asked me to follow some steps but when I answered that it was still not solved I finally could not get an answer anymore and they closed the case.

The second reason is that Viber was using around 50 % of CPU, sometimes more!

Even if I have a powerful computer with an Intel Core i7-4860HQ CPU running @ 2.4GHz and 16GB RAM and SSD  (for the non tech people, it means a very good computer) and viber was using nearly 50% of my CPU. The bad thing is that I did not notice it immediately as it does not use a lot when you start it. But if your computer is used for a few hours, CPU usage is increasing…

My computer is not old and I could hear the fans noise and I felt like my computer was not as powerful as it should be.

So I took a look at the task manager and discovered that Viber was the reason of that. When I googled the problem, I found that a lot of people were complaining about high CPU usage when using Viber. 

(see here: https://twitter.com/pravimali/status/407627058475302912)

Some people tweeted @Viber in 2013 about it and could not get is solved.

Finally, even if I liked being able to use Viber from my computer, today I decided to uninstall it. My CPU usage is now lower than 10% and I nearly don't hear my computer anymore... 

I will probably keep it on my smartphone for a while but I will try to come back or move to Skype, Hangout or WhatsApp.