The Explorer: Find the Coolest Windows Tools

A World of Third Party Cool Tools
Other readers were eager to talk about their freeware and shareware discoveries for system and general purpose editors, some of which go far beyond what SysEdit itself can do:

I just ran across a freeware SysEdit "clone" written in VB that runs on all Windows versions called (what else?!) System Editor. Check it out here. By the way, I found it via ShellCity, which is a great resource for all kinds of Windows utilities, especially shell replacements. -- Tim Jones

UltraEdit: Unfortunately it is not free. It costs $30. -- Ruth van Ielen

Freeware Sysedit Alternative -- Richard F. Dion

[Here is a program called] TxEdit that should work in all flavors of Windows. To use the SysEdit-like function it must be started with the /L switch (txedit.exe /L). -- Willster [That page includes three other free text editors, too! -- Fred]

If you are looking for an editor, try PFE32 (Programmer's File Editor). I have used it for a number of years. [This piece of freeware] works well with Windows and is especially handy in the Unix environment. -- Loren

Here's a pretty nifty freeware text editor called NoteTab Light, available at www.notetab.com or www.notetab.ch. It allows you to create Favorites categories, and to open all the files in a category in one shot. I created a category named SysEdit, and added the five sysedit files to it. Now, when I want Sysedit, I fire up NoteTab, select Favorites, SysEdit, and the five files are open in a tabbed MDI. It's also a pretty good programming editor with clip libraries, good search and replace. -- Michael Cox

TextPad is a great substitute for Sysedit! This is one of my workhorse programs. If you do any text editing, you owe it to yourself to get a REAL text editor especially if you rely on Notepad or Word. Among a ridiculous amount of other capabilities, you can simulate Sysedit with TextPad by creating a shortcut on the desktop; and edit the shortcut properties. Change the Target by adding each file you want to open to the end of the Target statement. TextPad requires them to be in parenthesis. My Target statement looks like this [all one line]:

"C:\Program Files\TextPad4\TextPad.exe" "c:\autoexec.bat" "c:\config.sys"
"c:\windows\win.ini" "c:\windows\system.ini" "c:\windows\protocol.ini"

TextPad costs $16.50 and can be found at textpad.com -- Jerry Jenkins

You were talking about replacements for SysEdit... Another great tool is Notepad for Windows Ver. 0.85. It is by Small Team Software. -- Joe Sandel Kenai

There is a shareware program that I have been using for several years called Windows Commander. It replaces Windows Explorer and is fondly reminiscent of the old Central Point - PC Tools. Also, for those who still have copies of Win 3.0, the Write program had a lot more features than Notepad and it works just fine with Win 9X. I seem to recall that you have to rename Notepad to something like dopepad then rename Write to Notepad and it will pop-up when you want to edit something. -- Jerry B.

Notpad ($15), that can be found at PJ Naughter's home page. -- pangolin

What I've come up with searching for a 'Notepad replacement' [was the freeware] Metapad. Hyperlinks stay hyper when you save them, so there's no need to copy and paste them into a browser. The fellow who developed metapad has a new 2.2 beta, but I'm just using version 2.0. Incidentally, I've used CWordpad as a substitute for 'Wordpad' for a couple of years. It's no longer supported, but still available. I like it because it has a spelling checker function. Cetus has more or less displaced its now-unsupported freeware so it is not so noticeable, but a copy of Wordpad and their version of a Notepad replacement can be found here. -- Fred E. Schnetzler

There is a free system editor clone at earthQUAKE (click the "System Editor" link on the left navigation bar). It has some good protection features for newbies, and seems to be just what you were asking for. -- Gavin Sharp

Ontrack's Systemsuite 2K has one that works fine, along with a terrific selection of other great utilities, and is priced right at $60. -- Keith Flint

Great suggestions. Many thanks to all who wrote in!

What other cool tools and/or hidden Windows items do you know about? Please Join in the Discussion

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