AMUST registry cleaner

I have found it very useful .. it just doesnt wipe out the whole registry.. just cleans a few areas causing no problems.

www.amustsoft.com/products/registrycleaner

Newt 2.0

This is an awsome little network auditing tool. Its free for networks with 10 machines or less attached to it.

It will detect any and every machine connected to the network and give you a HUGE amount of information about these machines. It will tell you everything from what software is installed an a machine, how much RAM it has, how much it can hold, MAC addresses, Shares, Serial No.'s, etc.

It saves so much time since you don't have to run around to each individual machine trying to find out what's on what.

I love it.

K-Lite Codec Pack

An Audio/Video codec pack that contains most of the codecs... I use it. Any one got some other useful codec packs ?

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...Codec_Pack.htm

I'm sure by now these have been mentioned already but, I feel they are all worth mentioning again!

Corel Paint Shop Pro X - excellent graphics editing sofware.
Macromedia Suite- Ultimate web authoring suite.
Trillian- Excellent IM, connects to all services simultaneously. Download from www.ceruleanstudios.com/
Sibelius 4- the ultimate musicians tool
Skype- Online phone excellent!!!! download from www.skype.com
ISObuster- excellent for opening ISO image files with out writing them to a cd.
Audacity- excellent freeware audio editing and multiple track recorder. download from http://audacity.sourceforge.net

My recommended list of software is:

Antivirus - AVG Free Edition
Anti-spyware - Lavasoft Adaware SE Personal, Spybot S&D
Firewall - Zonealarm Personal Firewall
Registry - RegCleaner
System Monitor - Process Studio

Other utilities
Systinternals Rootkit Revealer
CutePDF (converts files to PDF format)
BitTornado (for BitTorrent)

Other Software
WinAmp
WinRAR
Exact Audio Copy (CD ripping software)
LAME (MP3 encoder used with Exact Audio Copy)
Mozilla Firefox
Trillian (IM client that can handle MSN, Yahoo, IRC, AIM & ICQ)
mIRC (good quality IRC client)
TeakUI (a powertoy for windows - see MS website)

The great thing about all those programs and utilities are that they are completely free. In addition to the list I originally posted, I've recently changed my IRC client to IceChat instead of mIRC. I believe that IceChat is better, but mIRC is still good.

It would take me too long to post all the links for them, but a quick Google search will help you.

I realise that some of the programs in that list aren't exactly well-known, so I suppose I should describe them a bit more.

BitTornado - You might have heard of BitTorrent. It's a brilliant way of downloading files because it splits them up during transport and reassembles everything at the end. As they are split up, it means the bits are smaller and they travel across the net quicker. While bittorrent has been frequently used for illegal downloading, it is a perfectly legitimate system and there are plenty of things available that are ok to download.

Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer - Rootkits are small programs that are embedded in your operating system. There is now way to remove them, but it might be of interest to find out if you have any. A recent high-profile case involved Sony implanting rootkits on computers using audio CDs that people play on the computer.

TeakUI - This is a great utility which can alter all sorts of aspects of Windows, such as removing the arrows from shortcut icons or stopping the message about unread mail on the login screen.

CutePDF - Adobe Acrobat costs a lot of money. CutePDF is a freeware tool which does Acrobat's job of converting things to PDF. You can then view these files in any PDF reader. The program is simply a printer driver.

Process Studio - This is a great system monitor which tells you exactly what processes are running and also how much of the memory and CPU each one is taking up.

Hi,
Most softwares (if not all) that were listed here are free.
I'd like to add a couple that are downloadble, but not all of them are free - just can't live without this stuff.

Mozilla Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/ - an exelent, easy to use, problem free email client that i've been using for a long time now.

Winamp http://www.winamp.com/player/free.php - a time proven media player that i just love!

Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/ - a backup utility that i use since v7, restored my data perfectly after several crashes - never thought of changing to something else - my all time favourite!

I have AVG, Zone Alarm, Spybot, Firefox, WinRAR and also;

INFRANVIEW

Image Viewer, does everything you would want, including a few image manipulation tasks.

Freeping

Ping loads of PCs at once, yay

phpBB

Free forum software > Also > MySQL, Apache, php on IIS.

B2Evolution

Blogging Software, going to try this out on the weekend, but it looks cool.

Some free online games;

War Rock

http://www.americasarmy.com/

Some of these may well have been metioned already but the title said software finds worth downloading and I am going to assume we are talking freeware.

Antivirus
http://www.asw.cz/eng/avast_4_home.html -Avast! for home - This is a freeware AV for personal use & while I do not personally use it I have installed it on other peoples systems with good results.

Download Manager
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/ - Free Download Manager which also seems to be without adware or spyware. I live in a rural area and broadband either is not available or just too costly to consider. The dialup option limits the size of files you can download in one session so a download manager which allows you to resume a download is certainly worth having.

Spyware Tools
http://security.kolla.de - Spybot Search and Destroy what more can one say. It seems to do the job on the widest range of pests.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/ - Spyware Blaster - works well to keep script type spyware/adware off the system

Firewall Test
http://scan.sygate.com/prescanfaq.html - Sygate's port scanner which may be no longer available soon since Symantec appears to have purchased Sygate.

System Information Utility
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html - Belarc Advisor is system hardware, software, and security checker which produces a overview of your system in a browser window. While it is not the most detailed for each area you can get, it seems to do fine for most people's PCs.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download414.html - Easy Cleaner 2.0x is a freeware registry and disk cleaner. The link is to a free download site as I think the author charges for access to his website to cover bandwidth costs but the program is freeware otherwise as far as I know.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx
Windows XP TweakUI and Power Toys - TweakUI for Windows and Windows Powertoys are a group of programs by Microsoft which are free to owners of Windows that allow changing and adding features to the Windows GUI.

http://www.panterasoft.com/index.html - Hard Drive Health ( 2nd item on page ) is a free hard drive monitor that allows you to keep track of the S.M.A.R.T. status of your drive and can be set to alert you if temperature or attributes change so as to be ready or ward off any possible failure of the drive.

spyware related:

winpfind - Pfind is a program that scans common locations on your hard drive for files that match certain patterns known to be used by malware. It will also provide exports of certain registry keys that are used by various malware.

APM - DiamondCS APM is an advanced process/module viewer and manipulation utility that allows unique control over target processes by becoming a part of them.

Take control of a process by becoming a part of it
Unlike conventional process viewers, DiamondCS APM doesn't control processes by remotely sending them instructions. Instead, APM safely attaches a part of itself to the target process, essentially becoming a part of that process. Once 'inside', APM is free to perform actions on behalf of the target process. For example, if it calls the ExitProcess API call, the target process terminates.

process killer - tiny command line program used to terminate processes

ccleaner

system audit:
http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php

system security:
nMap
Metasploit
Ethereal
Cain & Able
Snort
Packet Builder ** questionable tool... **
IECookiesView

random built in windows tools:
fsutil
driverquery
gpresult
netsh
ipv6
mmc

random:
http://cygwin.com/