I will share my list of tools and how to setup on Windows 7. This page is under constant change and reformatting.
Table of Contents
Utilities
Windows Utilities
Windows environment variable editor Rapid Environment Editor portable
Windows uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Portable
Archiver 7-Zip
Total Commander – windows file manager, FTP client and etc. Trial version, not allowed to use in commercial environment.
Free Download Manager
KeePass – Password manager
IrfanView – Image viewer and editor. Not allowed to use in commercial environment. Free alternative to use at work is JPEGView.
Agent Ransack/File Locator Lite – my favorite tool to search for files and file contents, especially for network drivers on Windows machines in corporate environments. Lite version allowed for commercial use.
Fonts
I used this blog to download fonts.
Editors
Text Editor – Notepad++, Atom, Sublime
CSV Editor – CSVed
XML Editor – XMLSpy (paid)
Scripting
CygWin
It enables Linux command line (shell or bash) on Windows. Very convenient if whole ETL platform, such as Informatica, Oracle DB is deployed on Linux, but developer machines are running Windows.
Packages I have installed:
- lynx – a text-based web browser.
- wget – downloads files form web which supports http, https and ftp protocols.
- curl – a tool to transfer data from or to a server. It is designed to work without user interaction.
- rsync – handy tool for synchronizing stuff from one place to another (especially over the internet)
- python3 – an interpreted programming language. I like to write shell scripts with it.
- python3-setuptools – people use this when distributing their python stuff.
- bzip2, tar, gzip
- bash-completion – auto-complete for bash
- vim, vim-common
- tmux – a terminal multiplexer, allowing a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote terminal session.
- git – a distributed version control tool.
- diffutils – is a package of several programs related to finding differences between files.
- openssh – SSH client.
- ca-certificates – allows your Cygwin environment to validate SSL certificates. Needed for git as well.
- dos2unix – allows convert text files from windows EOL to linux and many other things.
- chere – open Cygwin command prompt at any specific folder. Details Open Cygwin at a specific folder
- libxml2 – XML library to work with XML files. I use it to query XML file with XPATH and format XML to canonical form in order to compare two simple XML files.
Command line call to install predefined packages from the list above:
setup-x86.exe --no-desktop --download --local-package-dir="C:\cygwin" --packages="lynx,wget,curl,rsync,python3,python3-setuptools,bzip2,tar,gzip,bash-completion,vim,vim-common,tmux,git,diffutils,openssh,ca-certificates,dos2unix,chere,libxml2"
Other useful links about Cygwin:
- Install Cygwin and set new default home
- Cygwin setup
- How to install Console2 for tab based console windows.
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/console/
- Set custom title for cygwin window
Context menu enhancers
Copying and sharing paths to files in local folders and network drives – Path Copy Copy
Allows copying Unix path format in Windows.

Set and Unset as Read-only to File and Folder Context Menu


Informatica Power Center Client Tools
Customizations

Categories list I changed font:
- Expression editor – Consolas
- SQL Editor – Consolas
- All output windows – ProFont for Windows

WinMerge
WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.