Listible is a great resource for finding useful information. In true Web 2.0 tradition, it harnesses the wisdom of many to build definitive lists. If you’re a frequent visitor to the site, you might agree that the method is pretty hit and miss!

Anyway, Listible’s Open Source Applications For Windows list has become quite popular recently and I’ve dug in and tested a few of the programs.

It goes without saying that FireFox is my primary browser, and you’ll be aware of applications like Audacity, OpenOffice.org, and The GIMP (although not many people know there’s a Windows port of GIMP)

Aside from the better known apps, there are a few little gems that I haven’t heard about before.

7-Zip, for instance is a free zip utility that can handle a range of archive formats, meaning that you don’t need to have a copy of WinZip or WinRAR to open tar.gz files in Windows (something that I needed during my installation of Drupal)

The list has tons of other free resources for Windows, that might replace more expensive alternatives. This is certainly true of OpenOffice which would save you over £350.00 on the cost of Microsoft Office. Plus OpenOffice.org has PDF export capabilities which MS Office just doesn’t.

Yesterday my Windows XP Pro PC had a hissy fit and crashed. Rebooted and got the Blue Screen Of Death. Rebooted successfully to safe mode, then into normal functionality. Or so I thought…

So, I was immediately able to connect to the network, log on and access the internet and work with my exchange mailbox. The first indication of problems was when I tried to access my documents on a network share. I started getting messages about the Network Service not being started.

I started troubleshooting basic functionality: pinged a few local servers, checked out DNS resolution, etc and it was all fine. Tried a net use to connect a network drive, but this failed. I checked the various network services and all were running normally, so I tried to simply browse the network through the childishly-named My Network Places, but got a similar “Unable to browse the network” error, along with “The network is not present or not started”. Shit! Enter Google…

Turns out whatever happened screwed up a registry value which bizarrely allowed other network access, but not UNC-type stuff. I found a thread at CryptoOnline that pointed me through to the official fix at Microsoft. Follow this fix and you should be able to browse the network again immediately without a reboot.

Hope this helps anyone who has suffered the same problem.