Zone Alarm is a good firewall, with a free personal version available.
Sygate firewall is good too, but recently bought by Symantec, and discontinued. But still available for download. (files site - Version 5.5 build 2710 reportedly works best.)
AVG Antivirus has a FREE (for personal use) virus checker.
LavaSoft gives you Ad-Aware to search your computer for Adware and Spyware. Be sure you get their RefUpdate program too, to stay up to date. LavasoftUSA's .com domain was broken lately, so here is their .NET URL, as a backup. And to be sure, here is a link to their European Site. (free version download).
SpybotS&D may have surpassed Lavasoft's product - you can run both...
Spyware Blaster is a useful tool too.
Ewido Security Suite - XP only, but interesting and useful. (bought out by someone?)
Nick's site for info on removing SpyAxe. (includes getting the smitRem Tool)
The DOXDESK parasite page offers much information about what can be done with bad ActiveX - this page will also check your Internet Explorer installation for some common parasites (must allow ActiveX for this to work).
Greatis Startup Application Database is great for identifying mystery processes that are loaded on startup (or elsewhere).
! Process Library (search) is a well done list of many processes that may be running on your computer. Shortcut to directory, dll search.
MalWhere processes list is OK too.
Castle Cops is another process/startup site.
Bleeping computer startup list (seems largely spy/malware oriented).
PopUp-Stopper from Panicware works with Internet Explorer to stop those annoying pop-up windows - and it is free. Of course the Mozilla Firefox has great built-in popup control.
QuoteFix facilitates quoting message replies in Outlook Express (and Outlook?). (author, redirection to)
Desktop Save and Restore can save the location of all of your desktop icons, good for recovering from a minor crash, safe mode or screen resize. (Icon Restore is a similar (also free) utility.
WinZip is a popular compression utility. But it's commercial, you should try 7-Zip instead.
FileZilla is my current choice for an FTP client. There is also an FTP server (beta) available. (both are free, open-source) Regrettably, FileZilla has abandonded support for Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME - the last FileZilla version that will work with those is 2.2.22 - So far, I have not found a free, usable, replacement FTP client... (luckily, there is a Linux version of FileZilla now, so I"m happy...)
SysInternals offers several handy (*technical*) tools - Process Explorer, Registry Monitor, Port Monitor, File Monitor, and more.
Dimension 4 - neat FREE time setting utility from ThinkMan Software.
Sam Spade network tools.
MyWanIP is a free utility that tells you what your IP is for the current connection. Works behind a router too.
Mike Lin has some good tools including an 'msconfig' clone that works on W2K.
Bittorrent is an interesting way to distribute files, such as that latest Linux distro - my favourite now is uTorrent - well done, small filesize (under 150K), good user interface, much less CPU demanding than anything else I've tried, easily usable on my old P-200 (128M, Win98SE). (but Windows only)
See also:
Paint Shop Pro seems good. But it's only available for Windows.
The Gimp is likely the leading open-source grapics solution. Available for Windows and Linux.
IrfanView - great graphics viewing program. Fast, free, good.
CDeX CD ripper, encoder, etc! Free! Good!
WinAmp - a very good, free audio player.
Goldwave seems to be a wonderful audio editor, file convertor, and more. (may take some work to find/install the plugins needed for all-round converting)
See several Xchat free ports to Windows:
Pidgin (used to be called "Gaim") is multi-platform, I use the Linux version, haven't tried it for Windows in a while, but probably good.
Another IM alternative is Trillian - pay, but there's a usable, limited features free version too.
Hergee berger snooger bork . . . NOT a good thing, but worthy of attention - Microsoft, thru their MSN network, directed users of the great "Opera" web browser (better than Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" in many ways) to a different set of web pages than when viewed with other browsers. Here's the story from Opera. And a link to the more technical details. And reports from CNET, Slashdot, and The Register. In a rather humorous form of retaliation (and to demostrate a point), Opera has released a special version of their browser that converts the MSN page to the language of the Swedish Chef (bork, bork, bork - remember the Muppet Show?)
More to add?
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