I find it odd that so many people running Windows Vista or higher still run their OS under a limited access user account. Running certain apps and installing 90% of apps require admin rights. Most users like myself run directly through accounts with Admin rights and we turn off UAC.
if you were unsuccessful with the activation process and it returning an error email me and I will help you retrieve your registration data.

sixxkilur@gmail.com

Seems to have installed and activated OK on win 7 32-bit. currently indexing. I am looking forward to using it to track multiple USB flah disks. I did find it a bit disconcrting, however, that the agreement signed when installing the program refers to it being a "beta version." Is anybody else concerned about that? I have not noticed that to be the case with other offerings at GOTD. I would think that it would be a bit unusual to charge such a significant amont for a "beta" product. (Not complaining in this circumstance, as I realize it is offered to us Free today.) I would hope that companies offering a "beta" product would be a bit more obvious about doing so.

The File>Options>Look & Feel dialog box will not all fit on the screen of my little netbook, yet there is no scroll bar on the right side and it will not resize for me. I have no way to know how much is there that I cannot see.

I've just installed this on both Vista Home Premium 32-bit, and Win7 Home Premium 64-bit, but unchecked the 'Run program' option at the end of the install, before I activated it with the Activate.exe in the download folder.

Both installations started clean with no errors, and both were registered to 'Giveawayofthe day' without further action on my part.

Hope this helps, even though I know it's late in the day.

It is too bad that this software has received stupid thumbs down from so many users who don't read and/or follow the installation and activation instructions. Dudes, Install but don't launch. Then click the activate icon. Then, launc again. Use the program (don't just open and see a 10 device limit). Exit. Restart. It works! And then there are the users who recommend other applications that don't do what this does (e.g. Everything ... a great application, but not useful for indexing external drives, and searching when the are not connected). Did you even try this? Hello?

If your drive has lots of graphics, the index from this application is bigger. Yes, I ran it on a 32 GB file and ended up with a 16 MB index. Another disc that had a lot of graphics was 30 GB and the index was 97 MB. This is extremely useful for me, as I have several external drives at over 50 TB. Obviously, these can't all reside on my laptop (I wish!). However, I can "search" them anytime I want now with this application to "see if I have it" by searching the much smaller index files I keep on my laptop.

I have found this giveaway very useful and would consider purchasing it at a price about $20 or less. $50? See Giovanni's recommendations and risk a little adware, toolbars, default webpages, and possibly malware. $50 is too much, even though I love it. Thanks GAOTD!

Re: Dusterboys comment

'i am not sure how cataloguing files and folder using this software in effect would help me in enhancing my effiency'

Basically, if you have loads of DVD's, CD's and Blu-Ray's as well as 10 or so Terabytes of external disk space with programs and games, images and video backed up, it enables you to catalogue and find you programs much easier.

If you are anything like me, my disks have scant information on the disk surface. With This program, all you need to do is label your disk with a number and then reference that number in the database.

WinCatalog has saved me countless hours searching for games, video, family photo's as well as programs etc. As I mention in my post above, I'd misplaced the registration code for this program (after purchasing it from BitsDuJour. I couldn'nt rememeber which disk it was backed up on. It took me 5 seconds to find the correct disk and another 2 minutes to locate the disk and place it in my Blu-Ray player and I found the code in less than another 30 seconds. Previously I'd spent a good few hours before giving up looking for it.

As already mentioned above, the backup of your database can take up quite a bit of space. Even though I've been using this program for two years, I've still not finished adding disk contents to the database. I have a couple of thousand discs, so you can imagine the time it takes. CD's are sorted very quickly, a DVD in a matter of minutes, but Blu rays can take several minutes to catalogue if you have a lot of files on them (I use 25GB discs).

My backed up database takes up over 4GB of space, which is quite a lot. If you continue to create backups without deleting the older backups it's surprising how much space you can lose on your main disk, which is where the database stores the backup (in 'My Documents'). This can be changed if you wish). I always delete previous backups once I've backed up the latest.

:)

I highly recommend this program. One of the giveaway teams better acquisitions IMO.

OK just downloaded this and indexed on one of my small external HDDs

No thumbnails produced like I get on whereisit?

btw address was wrong it's http://www.whereisit-soft.com/

and whereisit? is 10 dollars cheaper

so sorry it won't be staying on my machine, but thanks for the try.

I've been using WinCatalog Light for years; great for when I archive stuff to a cd or dvd to remove from hard drive; let's me know what is on the disk. $50 does seem like a lot however; assume the PRO version has a lot more features but so far the light version seems fine. The version I have has no limits for number of disks; it's a 2007 version (don't laugh now).

seems similar to the program I use all the time called whereisit? from http://whereisit.com

I know it's a paid program but with 1651 DVD's full and 4 external HDD's I don't think it's going to be worth me downloading this, and re-doing my catalog.

However I WILL be downloading this and will reply to this topic with a comparison between the two.

I've been looking for a program in which I could view all the images on a disc; and this program fitted the bill, I had it scan a 1.5 TB USB disk which it did quite rapidly and then I searched for *.jpg files.
When it had found them in its very rapid search facility the view was set to thumbnails, and much to my delight I had thumbnails of all image files on the disc.
I found files I've been trying to find for many months with just a quick scan of the thumbnails, don't miss this program if you can possibly help it.


A number of people seem to be having problems getting it registered; the Activate.EXE does this usually by adding to the registry, some companies also create a file on the drive, whatever, this is what the Activate EXE does.
Generally speaking the program will not show it registered until it has been re-opened after the registration has been written; the reason for this is that most programs check that they are registered when they first open and do not check again within the normal running of the program.

Well some people don't see that this application keeps a list of files on all your storage devices, even usb and external drives and cds and dvds.

Looking at this page http://www.wincatalog.com/features.html it says it can also produce an html report, so that you can print it, or copy the list to another computer.

You can add a location to the records e.g. "DVD #5 in closet"
You can add a "contact" to track who borrowed your dvd

Also most important "WinCatalog uses an industry standard database engine SQLite in the core"

By using an SQL database there is the possibility of using the database with a different application in the future. Some free apps only have a proprietary database, meaning once you invest all that time in building your database, you can never use it outside of their application.

Installed OK .. and first HDD indexed OK .... but it failed to index my NAS drive .... runs initially then simply stalls, no error nothing ... stops at different point each time ...
Give up & removed

@those having problems to activate:

1. General: Under Vista and higher run activation with admin rights to make sure, that registration information are written to the registry.

2. Specially for this app: You have to create and open a catalog first, then it will be fully activated.

Hope I could help. Thank you developer and gaotd for this good and - hurrah - not crippled soft.

The free format database Treepad (www.treepad.com) has the function Tree/Insert/Catalog of Files. With that I have made databases of files on CD's. Or I made a catalog of all files I had saved in the folder containing all files I used or prepared while working on a specific project.

The free version of Treepad does not have the function to generate a catalog of files.

The cheapest version of Treepad with this function costs the same as the giveaway: $29.95. If you buy a single licence you may use it on all your computers. I have been getting free updates for a number of years.

Anyone here able to point a plain text catalog builder?
Today's tool does a great job when it comes to taking samples of info out of cataloged items, but this can be considered a security flaw under certain circumstances.
Also, despite being able to produce non-crypted data, such data is not easily viewed thru text editors, which is a no-go when it comes to company eventually abandoning tool support and you're stuck with thousands of catalog files whose collections cannot be updated anymore.

I can't even extract it without getting an error. States an error occurs when renaming a file. LOL If you really want someone to pay 50.00 for something, it should actually work without bugs.

I am running Windows 7 Premium 64 bit. I,too, cannot get it to register and it remains as the trial version even though I have created a catalog, have run activate.exe several times and reinstalled. If the activate program doesn't work why does the software not say so. There are many users who have experienced the same problem but I can't find any response from the software suppliers to our problems. If the installation process has been tested thoroughly how can so many people experience the same problem. I'm afraid it doesn't say much for the software if the simply task of installing it becomes so difficult.
WinCatalog - what is the answer??

[b]No Drag&Drop[/b]! I've just created a catalog and tried to drag&drop a file to my dekstop and nothing happened. So to just copy a file to desktop you need to right click on it, select Copy to physical volume, select desktop folder and click Ok. Come on people, [b]Drag&Drop[/b] is basic functionality, where is it?

Looks promising but needs work.
Can't display the EXE icons, nor the MIME ones.

"The same here 10 disk trial; solution this is present only before you create or open a collection database. Create or open collection and problem is solved."

Did not work for me!
I have an admin account and a user account. The registration works in admin account but not user account that I use the most!

Sadly looks like a great program but unfortunately tryed to extract the key number on the very same date this was offered(today!) told me the free giveaway has already expired! Really too bad about the "bugs" involved here

Another freeware app that acually works very well is Disk Explorer Pro (http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=d)

A few years ago I realized I had an huge number of cd's/dvd's that I had backed up many items on (from mp3 to data files to executable files for programs I had installed etc. etc. I tried at first to write on cover what was on the disk and soon found that was not possible (too many items). I then tried screen capture on the directory of disk and found that also not practical. Found DE Pro and all that was required was to insert the disk and the program catalogued what was on it under the name I created of 'disk 1'. I have now close to 200 disks catalogued like this and whenever I am looking cor a file or program or whatever, I search the database and it tell me what disk it is on. A very cool program and free.

LG

Why does it say 10 day trial when opened.. is it only a trial..

I personally use another free (for home use) alternative:
Disk Explorer Professional
http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=dd

Unfortunately there are few problems in DEP.
- it seems it is no longer developed,
- no Unicode support,
- problems with preview on video files,
- only internal data format.

But there are also benefits:
- preview of many types of files (video, fonts, pictures - with images, many another plug-ins for another file types for text description; this program do not declares preview for videos),
- preview of archives (many types),
- many translations,
- support FTP scanning,
- can add comment to directories,
...

The same here 10 disk trial; solution this is present only before you create or open a collection database. Create or open collection and problem is solved.

I want to thank today and daily and again and again eternally to Giovanni's comments that helped me to destroy my computer on last June 8: The command "open with" from "menu contest" was destroyed by a program named "Rogue Killer" (Suggested by him) on my computer. I was a fool (it was "at my own risk", you may say...) and now how can Giovanni help me to restore this functionality destroyed in practice by their friendly words? Thank for him and his penchant for prescribing solutions to others without real knowledge of consequences.

I would like to try the WinCatalog, installed it and activated successfully. But when I run it, it says that it's 10-day trial. Do I have to uninstall it & reinstall?

I can't get it to register?

Re: DeAnna #25: "I downloaded, installed read the READ ME file and activated, but I am still getting the trial version. Can someone help please?"

At first, I was also puzzled by the trial version message after activation but I later found that the message disappeared after I created the first catalog. Perhaps you can try to do so.

It would help if it could import and export in at least Excel format. I have my files already cataloged using OpenOffice's spreadsheet and it would take too long to go through all my disks to re-catalog. It's those sort of features that give a paid program an advantage over the free ones.

Thanks to WinCatalog + GOTD.

I like:
1) Ability to store thumbnails with each item in catalog.
2) Unicode support
3) Search function

Not a catalog, but lightning fast search: Everything !

http://www.voidtools.com/

This tiny search tool does not SCAN your disk, but reads the records of all NTFS hard drives. This way it provides information 'in real time' while you type.

I downloaded, installed read the READ ME file and activated, but I am still getting the trial version. Can someone help please?

Very nice software. What would make it worth the 50$ price tag would be if it perform a word index on all the text documents in the catalog. I am the program has identified and organized all the files so having a word index of the text docs would be a BIG help to me.

Won't run. Can't find some library. And I installed it twice.

Another good and free cataloging software is Gentibus CD (http://www.gentibus.com/).

i don't see how this is better than everything

Message for WinCatalog.com
Missing file in installer. Installed to Server 2008 R2 Datacenter SP1.

---------------------------
WinCatalog.exe - System Error
---------------------------
The program can't start because WMVCore.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

win7 does all this and more. I can find my files by typing the file in search and it will find the file. it put music in the music folder and pictures in the picture folder. it even put video in the video folder. so why will I get this program when win7 does the same thing and fast. GAOTD I wish you give away some photo programs like inpaint or dvd\cd programs it would be appreciated.

WinCatalog installed and activated on my Win7 x64 laptop without problems. It has the most powerful search functions (wildcards *, ?, logical operators AND, OR, NOT, further filtering of results from search, etc) among the many similar cataloging software that I have used for more than 10 years. This is very important as simple search functions yield too many unwanted results.

One downside that I have noticed after a brief period of testing is the much larger size of the catalog files generated (e.g 18M compared to 3.2M for CDWinder for the same disk and with similar properties of data stored). Maybe I missed some option setting in WinCatalog which resulted in large files.

Thanks to the WinCatalog author and GOTD for this software. I hope that the software will work nicely in future without nags, advertisements, promotions, and other annoyances. If so, this is a refreshing change after many junks (e.g., crippled software with annoying pop-ups) that were offered here.

As an admin it works with no limit but NOT as user, why??? Same computer.

installed on Windows 7 , activated, but still show only 10 disks limit!!!! Why!

Another thing Ive noticed while using it is that if the disc is less than blemish-free shall we say - on the surface to be read, than it just.....DOESN'T read it. Smart CD Catalog PRO WILL, as will a few others.

After running setup and then activation; closed and opened program to make sure it would show as registered, I then added a folder and subfolders of images.
It very rapidly scanned through and produced a database that included thumbnails of the images as well as the name of the file and date; one of the subfolders contained a zip file of the images, it listed contents by name but did not create thumbnails. This was repeated for another folder, in both cases it created collections the name of which was the same as that of the folder.

An extremely simple way of making a database from the contents of a folder, one that much to my surprise I will probably find useful, a nice program.

Hang on. Scanning only the SECOND disc, a dialog box popped up that it had "stopped working"
NOT a good start.

Slow, but seems quite accurate

Although programs like this are nice, you need to ask yourself this question: If you share your computer, do you really want to give someone else 1-click easy access to everything on it?

One of the idea behind this software, taken from their website:
The main purpose of WinCatalog is to give an ability to browse and search through your catalog even if the original disks and files are off-line.
For example, your files can be located on a removable hard drive, on a shared network folder, or burned on a CD, DVD, or a Blu-ray disc and you will still have the ability to find files with WinCatalog and even preview their properties, including picture thumbnails, before inserting or connecting any disk to the computer.
<b
i never used this type of software, but CD/DVD cataloguing could be useful, anyways thank you for this software,but it would h' been better if it worked otherway round like any explorer, where renaming a file/folder would effected those files where it resided, just a view. Thank you.

XP Users: Take note... must have Service Pack 3 installed... if you only have service Pack 2 installed, (as most do)... no joy today. See their website for more detailed system requirements than posted here. --- Mr. Lee

Sometimes a file list is all you need.
http://indeepsoft.blogspot.ro/2010/04/indeep-file-list-maker.html
http://no-nonsense-software.com/printfolder/