Ultimate Free Software List For Windows

[d3bruts1d]

Wanted to create a huge list of FREE SOFTWARE that is available for Microsoft Windows. Feel free to add additional free software to the list. Hopefully in a few months we have have "The Ultimate Free Software list".

 

Please do not use this thread for discussion of software, doing so will result in your message being edited or removed. Non-free software (including trial software) added to the list will be removed.

 

1. Please check to see that you are not submitting software that is already on the list.

2. Please disable signatures when posting to this thread, it'll help a lot.

3. Please follow the layout for posting as seen below.

4. Submit software only.

 

Thanks. With that, let's get started....

 

 

 

Trillian: http://www.trillian.cc

Use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, and IRC all in one program. Paid version aslo available.

 

GAIM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net

Use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, and IRC all in one program.

 

(IM2) Instant Messenger 2: http://www.im2.com

Use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, and IRC all in one program.

 

Miranda Instant Messenger: http://miranda-im.org

Another multi-protocol IM client. Supports AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and Gadu-Gadu.

 

Odigo: http://www.odigo.org

A multipurpose IM client that can connect with ICQ, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo, as well as it's own Odigo Network Service.

 

(AIM) America Online Instant Messenger: http://www.aim.com

IM client from America Online (AOL). Need I say more?

 

ICQ (I Seek You): http://www.icq.com

IM client originally from Mirabilis, now owned by AOL. Has a lot of "features". More popular among the tech savvy.

 

Microsoft Network (MSN) Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

Unused IM client from Microsoft.

 

Yahoo Messenger: http://messenger.yahoo.com

Another semi-popular IM client.

 

Exodus: http://exodus.jabberstudio.org/

Jabber client being developed to be a "successor" to the very popular client Winjab.

 

mIRC: http://www.mirc.com

Popular Windows-based IRC client.

 

BersIRC: http://bersirc.free2code.net

Windows-based IRC client.

 

XFire: http://www.xfire.com

IM client that shows what game you and your friends are playing. Allows you to add your favorites servers to a list and share them with friends.

Also keeps track of how much time you spend in a game.

 

GameSpy Arcade: http://www.gamespyarcade.com

Similar to XFire, though has larger overhead and acts more as an IRC client than IM. Interacts with FilePlanet and otehr GameSpy network sites.

Paid version also available.

 

FileZilla: http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/

A fast FTP and SFTP client.

 

Opera: http://www.opera.com

Though best known as a small and fast, alternate web browser, it also includes M2 which is a email client, contact manager, RSS reader,

news group reader, IRC client, and more. Features include tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, voice browsing, and a highly customizable interface,

among other options. Paid version is also available.

 

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

Another highly popular, alternate web browser. Based off of Mozilla. Features include tabbed browsing, Live Bookmarks, web-development tools,

among other options.

 

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org

The open source Netscape. A suite of software composed of Web Browser, IRC client, email client, news and RSS reader, and HTML-editor.

 

K-Meleon: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net

Fast, customizable, lightweight web browser based on the Gecko layout engine (the rendering engine of Mozilla).

 

Netscape: http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp

Alternate web browser owned by AOL. Pretty much dead now. See Mozilla.

 

Maxthon: http://www.maxthon.com

IE based web browser, which offers much of what Opera & FireFox offers. - Formally known as MyIE2.

 

JetLinks: http://www.dahlhoffit.com/JetLinks/

Manage your bookmarks and favorites.

 

Mozilla Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Redesigned version of Mozilla's email client. Perfect companion to Firefox.

 

Pegasus Mail: http://www.pmail.com

Once an extremely popular email client.

 

Eudora: http://www.eudora.com

Another popular email client, with many features. Paid version also available.

 

Dawn: http://www.joshie.com/projects/dawn/

Convert your address book from one program's format to another.

 

RSS Bandit: http://www.rssbandit.org

RSS feed reader and organizer.

 

SUPER Gravity: http://gravity.tbates.org/super.html

Usenet news reader.

 

KlipFolio: http://www.serence.com

Proprietary news feed service that uses "klips". Customizable and skinable.

 

(OOo) OpenOffice.org: http://www.openoffice.org

Open Source "Office Productivity Suite" based off of Sun Microsystem's Star Office. Compatible with Microsoft Office formats.

 

AbiWord: http://www.abisource.com/

Excelent word processor.

 

RealVNC: http://www.realvnc.com

Popular remote access software.

 

TightVNC: http://www.tightvnc.com

Another popular remote access software.

 

UltraVNC: http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

Another popular remote access software.

 

Picasa Photo Orginizer: http://www.picasa.com

A Google tool to help organize, manage, and edit images on your computer.

 

Google Toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com

Internet Explorer Toolbar from Google that helps block pop-ups, search Google sites, and more.

 

Google Desktop Search: http://desktop.google.com

Google tool to help find files on your computer in the same way you would find web sites through Google.

 

Google Deskbar: http://toolbar.google.com/deskbar/index.html

Access Google from your Windows Toolbar. Has it's own built-in mini-viewer.

 

Google GMail Notifier: http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/

Utility that sits in your system tray and monitors your GMail account for new messages. Can be set up to be the default email program for Windows.

 

GMail Drive: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Not an official Google tool. Allows you to set your GMail account up as a virtual drive on yoru computer to which you can transfer and store files at.

 

POP Goes The GMail: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=169789&st=0

Not an official Google tool. A nice utility that sits between you GMail account and your email client, converting messages from the web-based mailbox into POP3 messages.

 

Net Stumbler: http://www.stumbler.net

Useful tool for location open wireless networks around you.

 

Ethereal: http://www.ethereal.com

A popular network protocol analyzer. Can assit in troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education.

 

Ad-Aware SE: http://www.lavasoftusa.com

Most popular spyware scanning and removal utility. Paid versions also available.

 

Spybot: Search & Destroy: http://www.spybot.info

Another highly popular spyware scanner.

 

Zone Labs Zone Alarm: http://www.zonelabs.com

One of the most popular firewall software. Paid versions also available.

 

AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com

Powerful Anti-Virus utility. Some will claim it works better than Norton AND McAfee.

 

Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx

Several useful tools and plugs not available in Windows XP.

 

Microsoft Partner Pack For Windows XP: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/partnerpa...spx?prereq=true

Several Microsoft and 3rd party applications for Windows XP. Includes software from Post-It, Paypal, Google, and Computer Associates.

 

SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Utility that monitors fan speeds, temperatures and voltages in computers. - Pretty much what everyone switched to after MBM5 died.

 

(MBM5) Motherboard Monitor 5: http://mbm.livewiredev.com

No longer being developed. Easy to use utility for monitoring voltages, temperatues, and fan speeds.

 

CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Nice utility that will give you much of your system's hardware information.

 

ClockGen: http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

Software allow to dynamically overclock several devices of your system: CPU, memory, AGP and PCI bus.

 

RadLinker: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=609

A tweaker/linker for ATI Radeon based graphics cards.

 

ATI Tool: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=725

Overclocking utility for ATI video cards.

 

RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner&menu=8

A powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA and ATI display adapters.

 

CoolMon: http://www.coolmon.org

Neat utility for displaying information from MBM5 or Speedfan on your desktop.

 

GKrellM: http://www.redbog.com/products/gkrellm.html

Another tool that will display MBM information. Also supports plug-ins to display other information.

 

Samurize: http://www.samurize.com

A popular advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine.

 

(TKC) TinyKey Counter: http://keycount.piqsoftware.com

Tiny KeyCounter is a small, entertaining utility that counts the number of keys you press, how many times you click the mouse, and how many times you use the mouse scroll wheel. All of your statistics are submitted to a centralized server so you can see how you compare to other users from around the world. - OverclockersClub.com TKC Team Information

 

Electron Microscope III: http://www.em-dc.com

Tracks Folding@Home WU progress and stats amung multiple computers.

 

Fresh Download: http://www.freshdevices.com

Download management software.

 

Fresh UI: http://www.freshdevices.com

Utility to help configure and optimize Windows.

 

Fresh View: http://www.freshdevices.com

Manage and orginize audio, video, and image files.

 

AnalogX DLL Archive: http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/dllarch.htm

Find and remove unlinked DLL files on your system.

 

StrokeIt: http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

Add Mouse Gestures to Windows.

 

Dev-C++: http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/index.html

Full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the C/C++ programming language.

 

Nvu: http://www.nvu.com/

Free (open source) WYSIWYG HTML editor that rivals Dreamweaver and Front Page. Based on Mozilla's Gecko engine.

 

1st Page 2000: http://www.evrsoft.com

1st Page 2000 is a professional HTML editing software which lets you create great websites fast! The visually appealing program comes bundled with over 450+ Javascripts and supports all the latest web languages.

 

NoteTab: http://www.notetab.com

Leading-edge text and HTML editor.

 

Notepad++: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

Source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the M$ Windows environment.

 

Resource Hacker: http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/

View, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res).

 

(LS) LiteStep: http://www.litestep.net and http://www.litestep.com

Replacement desktop shell for Windows. Based on the AfterStep window manager.

 

(BB4Win) Black Box For Windows: http://www.bb4win.org

A minimalist replacement desktop shell for Windows.

 

AutoHotkey: http://www.autohotkey.com

A keyboard, joystick, and mouse remapper, shortcut key scripter, and word recognition engine. Must have for the keyboard fanatics!

 

A43 File Management Utility: http://www.shawneelink.net/~bgmiller/

A file management utility similar to Windows Explorer with more functions.

 

Quick ShutDown: http://www.winutility.com/qsd/

A fast and easy-to-use shutdown tool that allows you to shutdown, reboot, hibernate, logoff, standby or lock your computer with the one mouse click.

 

SyncBack: http://www.2brightsparks.com/

Allows you to easily back-up, restore, and synchronise files.

 

ePrompter: http://www.eprompter.com/

Automatically and simultaneously checks and retrieves your email messages from up to sixteen password protected email accounts such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink, Email.com, Excite, iName, Juno, Lycos, Mail.com, Mindspring, MSN, MyWay, Netscape, POP3, OneBox, Rediffmail, SBC Yahoo, Switchboard, USA.net and hundreds of other email domains.

 

WinWall: http://www.net-session.com/index.php?page=winwall

Manage, maintain, and change you wall paper.

 

BitTorrent: http://bittorrent.com/

Official BitTorant utility. Popular method for Linux ISO downloads.

 

KeyPass: http://keepass.sourceforge.net/

Nice program for you to manage and store your passwords. Even better, you can password protect it!

 

Process Explorer: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? This will tell you. Awesome to have!

 

WeatherWatcher: http://www.singerscreations.com/

Nice utility that... watches the weather!

 

Weather Bug: http://www.weatherbug.com/

One of the most popular programs to watch the weather and display forcast.

Edited December 7, 2004 by d3bruts1d

[d3bruts1d]

EVEREST: http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.p...ang=en&pageid=1

A system information, system diagnostics and benchmarking utility.

 

Futuremark's 3DMark 05: http://futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/

Video benchmark software. - DirectX 9.0 & Pixel Shader 2.0 - Paid version also available.

 

Futuremark's 3DMark 03: http://futuremark.com/products/3dmark03/

Video benchmark software. - DirectX 9.0a - Paid version also available.

 

Futuremark's 3DMark 2001 SE: http://futuremark.com/products/3dmark2001/

Video benchmark software. - DirectX 8.1 - Paid version also available.

 

Futuremark's PCMark 04: http://futuremark.com/products/pcmark04/

Application based benchmark - Paid version also available.

 

AquaMark3: http://www.aquamark3.com

Gaming performance benchmark. - Paid version also available.

 

Fresh Diagnose: http://www.freshdevices.com

Analyze and benchmark your computer system.

 

Overclockulator: http://www.pimprig.com/downloads/index.php...and%20Utilities

Great little app that will be an overclocker's best friend! Various calculating functions aimed straight at the overclocker incuding a tool to add up your systems total wattage use, CPU and FSB calculations, Temp conversions and more.

Edited October 29, 2004 by d3bruts1d

[Ruisu]

Folding@Home: http://folding.stanford.edu

Distributed Computing Protein Folding Software. - OverclockersClub.com Folding@Home Team Information

 

S.E.T.I@Home: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

Distributed Computing ET Finding Software. - OverclockersClub.com S.E.T.I@Home Team Information

 

SmartFTP: http://www.smartftp.com/

A high quality, frequently updated ftp client software. - Paid version also available.

 

Serv-U: http://www.serv-u.com/

A free FTP Server utility.

 

Apache2Triad: http://apache2triad.sourceforge.net/

A nice package of Apache 2, phpNuke, phpBB, XMail, myPHPadmin, and other cool things like python etc., so you can get your website (Apache 2 supports unlimited virtual domains) up and running on an Apache server.

Edited October 22, 2004 by d3bruts1d

[d3bruts1d]

Nullsoft WinAmp: http://www.winamp.com

Popular Audio & Video player. Supports many media formats, as well as skinning and plug-in abilities. Paid version also available.

 

Sonique: http://sonique.lycos.com/

Another popular media and MP3 player.

 

KoolPlaya: http://www.koolplaya.de

A small video player. Claims to play any video file you throw at it (as long as you have the correct codex).

 

foobar 2000: http://www.foobar2000.org

Nice and small audio player.

 

Quintessential Player: http://www.quinnware.com

Another media player.

 

CDex: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net

One of the most downloaded and used tools for ripping and converting audio files.

 

GSpot Codex Information Appliance: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

Nice tool that will analyze an video file and tell you what codex that file needs to play.

 

Easy Audio Editor: http://www.dandans.com/EasyAudioEditor/

Perform various operations with audio data such as visual editing, creating, recording, and playing audio files, applying various audio effects, filtering, format conversion, audio file information editing and more. It supports all major audio and video formats.

 

Mp3tag: http://mp3tag.de/en/index.html

Powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit ID3-tags, APE-tags and Vorbis Comments of audio files.

 

ID3-TagIT: http://www.id3-tagit.de/english/index.htm

A programm for editing, adding, or deleting ID3 TAGs in MP3 files. Single file and batch editing are both supported. Edit one, ten or all your MP3 files at once!

 

MP3 Book Helper: http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net

Provides rapid Mp3 (ID3v1, ID3v2) and Ogg/Speex/Flac Vorbis tags editing and file renaming functions. Mass Tag editing is done using special variables and Regular Expressions.

Edited October 29, 2004 by d3bruts1d

[adrenalinepcs]

Avant Browser: http://www.avantbrowser.com

A good add on for IE.

 

Apophysis: http://www.apophysis.org

Very nice Fractal Art renderer.

 

Wordweb: http://wordweb.info/free/

Good offline thesaurus and dictionary for Windows.

[Reidhardt]

SpywareBlaster: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Prevents most spyware from ever loading, tracking cookies included. A subscription is needed for automatic updating however.

 

7-zip: http://www.7-zip.org/

File archive utility compatible with many different types of archives. Has it's own compression format with a better compression ratio than even WinRAR.

 

The GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/

The GNU Image Manipulation Program. Think a free Photoshop.

 

Atomic Clock Sync: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/atomic-clock/

Sync your PC's clock with an atomic clock.

 

Driver Cleaner: http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

Elimate any files left from previous driver installations.

[Newport]

DivX: http://www.divx.com/

Its a Winamp for videos. DivX can play many movie files given that it has the proper Codecs for them. - Paid version also available.

 

Prime95: http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/softw...achung/prime95/

Use this to burn in your processor, make sure your OC is stable, or benchmark your system.

 

ATI Tray Tool: http://www.radeon2.ru/atitray/

A great program to fine turn your ATI GFX Card. Mostly used to overclock ATI cards though.

Edited October 24, 2004 by d3bruts1d

[cybergrunt69]

PUTTY: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

also at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY

Awesome telnet / SSH client.

 

WinSCP: http://sourceforge.net/projects/winscp

WinSCP is a SFTP and SCP client for Windows using SSH. Its main function is secure copying of files between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this basic function, WinSCP manages some other actions with files. Plugin to FAR manager is available too.

[Ghost2520]

Restoration: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

A utility that allows you to recover files after your recycle bin has been emptied.

[Phil]

Firegraphic 6: http://www.firegraphic.com

The easiet program I've found for downloading digital photos.

 

CoreFTP Lite: http://www.coreftp.com

Ftp client.

[Dignan]

Sam Spade: http://www.samspade.org/ssw/

Any online info gathering and network diagnostic tools. Ping, traceroute, whois, dig, finger are all available with an easy to use interface.

 

FAH Logstats: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fahstats/

This is another mointoring program much like electron microscope. Monitors progress showing points per day, hour, week and averages.

[cybergrunt69]

Apache: http://www.apache.org

Webserver, support, multiple projects including SpamAssassin

 

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com

Extreamly popular database.

 

PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org

High performance database engine, open-source, highly-configurable

 

PHP: http://www.php.net

(Similar to Microsoft's ASP code)PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

 

Webalizer: http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

Available for multiple platforms, the Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser.