Hmmmm i think ill give opera a try :)

EDIT: i like :)

I only list here, the programs that I have used and I’m satisfied with, I know there are other great programs, but these are just the ones that I use, and can verify, as being worthy.

SYSTEM INVENTORY
Everest: http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

SPYWARE
AdAware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
SpywareBlaster: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Microsoft AntiSpyware (XP only): http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

VIRUS PROTECTION
AVG Free: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download886.html

VIRUS and SPYWARE DETECTION
Ewido (XP only - trial version): http://www.ewido.net/en/
HijackThis: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html

ONLINE HijackThis ANALYZERS
HijackThis analyzer #1: (website) http://www.hijackthis.de/index.php?langselect=english
HijackThis analyzer #2: (website) http://www.help2go.com/modules.php?name=HJTDetective
HijackThis analyzer #3: (website) http://hjt.iamnotageek.com/

ONLINE VIRUS SCAN WEBSITE
Trend Micro: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Miscellaneous Tools
Starter: http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlstarter.html
Icon Restore: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4125.html
Erunt (XP only): http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
MemTest86: http://www.memtest86.com/
A-Squared: http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/download/
CWShredder: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Intern...WShredder.shtml

Firewall: Zone Alarm
www.zonelabs.com

AntiVirus: Avast! Antivirus Home Edition (free)
www.avast.com

Browser: Mozilla Firefox
www.mozilla.org/products/firefox

Media Player: Windows Media Player/Apple iTunes
www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/mp10
www.apple.com/itunes

File Compression: WinZip/WinRar
www.winzip.com
http://www.rarlab.com

System Inventory: Everest
www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

Windows SideBar: SmartBar XP
www.smartbarxp.com

Disk Health Monitor: Drive Health
www.helexis.com

Window Decorator: Style XP
www.tgtsoft.com/prod_sxp.php

Browser: Firefox and Flock
Email: Thunderbird
Media: Windows Media Player 9 and VLC
Messenger: Trillian
SSH: PuTTY
Desktop Enhancements: Hotkeycontrol and Google Desktop
Spyware: Microsoft AntiSpyware , Ad-Aware SE Personal , Spybot-S&D
FTP: SmartFTP
Misc: Who Lock Me?
Network Bandwidth Monitor: NetStat Live
IRC: mIRC
BitTorrent: Azureus (I might switch to µTorrent 1.2 )
Text Editor (for programming): Crimson Editor

Some of these have already been listed, but I think they are worth repeating.

Antivirus: AVG free
Firewall: Zonealarm
Antispy: Spybot S&D, Microsoft Antispyware
Photo editting: Irfanview, Jasc Paintshop Pro 8
Sound editting: Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition
Browser: Firefox
Email: Thunderbird
Compression: Winrar
System Utility: System Mechanic 5
Registry cleaner: Registry Mechanic

WinnerTweak A good software for tweaking windows settings.

http://www.winnertweak.com/

Hmm another good tweaking software in the winguides one located here

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.

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)

hi well really great work please also add some description abt the softwares and yea please post the key or crack also if you have :D . Thanks

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/products/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. :P

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/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.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/