Some great free software for keeping your pc in good shape

But It does require somekind of registration every once in a while?
Free yes.. but still... ?

Also, no mention about protection from rootkits.

"The whole process is very simple: you need to download the program from the avast! 4 Home Download page, selecting the appropriate language. Then you need to install it, which is a mostly an automatic process. Initially, if you don't register straight away, you'll install the trial version, which is fully functional for sixty days. During this period, you can register yourself on the avast! 4 Home Free Registration page, and you will receive your license key by E-mail within 24 hours. Insert this key into the avast! 4 Home product, and you will receive the non-restricted version of avast! 4 Home Edition, including access to the update service (the incremental update of the virus database), for one year. After this period you can reregister to obtain a new free license key."
 
I see your point, but I've used AVG and Avast, and I happen to think that Avast is better. Yes you have to register an email to be able to download virus pattern updates, but it is a completely functional, freeware anti-virus offering. It's not one of those deals where they ask you to pay money for a more feature rich program. It's totally free.

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

As far as rootkits go, I use AVG freeware rootkit detector:

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-rootkit/us/crp/0

BTW, this is one of the best threads I've ever seen on the internet. Very informative and helpful!
 
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BTW, this is one of the best threads I've ever seen on the internet. Very informative and helpful!

Thank you very much. I do believe you in that Avast! is a very good program.
I might even try it sometime - but that registration thing is a serious turn-off for me.
At the moment - I'm very satisfied with Avira's antivirus, even though it does that annoying ad thing when updating.

EDIT: Also I would like to mention in favour of avira antivirus - it seems to have a very small memory footprint. That's something I really appreciate.
 
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This is another program that saved my backside when I had a failing system. My OS was corrupted, system restore wasn't working, and I needed to burn critical files to CD before erasing my hard drive and re-installing XP. This bootable CD allowed me to get to desktop so I could access my critical files (game saves, lol) and burn them. This is a great bootable disk to burn and keep on hand in case of an emergency.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
 
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Gimp

http://www.gimp.org/

It seems to be the utility all the kids are using today. Its free and its said to be as powerful as Photoshop without taking up all the resources.
 
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Yeah.. Gimp is very powerfull. I've also come to understand that it is as powerful as the commercial image-editors like photosop. It has been a while since I last tried it...
However...

Here's a screenshot from the official site:
http://www.gimp.org/screenshots/windowsxp_screenshot1.png

That thing about all the the toolbars and stuff being separate independent windows really pissed me off. Is there a way to make it behave like paint.net or photoshop or paintshop pro for example?
 
Also there's a nice free image editor called Pixia:

http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/download.htm

EDIT: PLayed around with the new pixia release (Pixia English Edition ver. 4.1j! (Dated June 3, 2007)) ... I'm starting to get really comfortable with it... this is an excellent freeware program.
 
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Blender and IrFanView are well known but I never had occasion to use them. I have used ImgBurner.

I like the one that requires Vista (Snipping Tool) but people wrote in to complain that it wasn't free because of that. Either that's a good funny joke and I'm laughing here or I'm missing something.

The ComTEXT has got me really interested. That could be really handy in my PHP class. I'm currently using Notepad but they have TextWrite or TextPad loaded and recommend that over, say, NVU.

------------

I forget if Audicity got posted

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

here it is again if so. its surprisingly powerful.

There's a popular open source video player/capture utility out there but I forget what it is.

-----------------

Eclipse is becoming the tool for Java development, etc.

http://www.eclipse.org/

they use it Lawrence Livermore Labs I found out too.
 
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Yeah, I forgot about audacity! It's a great free very powerfull
multi-track audio recorder/editor and can be extended with plugins too.
I think I'll add it to my list on the first page next time I feel like editing it.
 
i'd like to add some of the programs on my list.. :)

Find and Run Robot - for launching apps.
Autohotkey - for remapping keyboard shortcuts or creating new ones, insurance against RTS.
Altap Salamander - a very cool file manager.
Miranda IM - a multi-protocol IM program.
 
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Altap Salamander - a very cool file manager.

The freeware version is feature limited. I would suggest using Total Commander instead. The demo is unlimited except for a simple nag screen at startup.
Total Commander is a nearly perfect file manager + (un)packer, ftp program, rename tool, ect. Feels like Norton Commander with much more functionality.
 
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I tried many image viewers but FastStone Image Viewer is the best so far. Fast, customizable in totally free. Much better than Irfan IMHO.:)
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

100% agree. Been using that one for a while now, too, to browse my babes pic collection :biggrin: and it's awesome. It's fast and it consumes very little disk space, i.e. the thumbnail database cache file stays within reasonable limits... with some other programs such as ACDSee that file reaches ridiculous sizes if you browse through large image libraries across several folders/drives. Not so with FastStone. And as an additional bonus it's much more stable when dealing with larger libraries, too (ACDSee, for example, tends to crash or fail to load plugins after a while).
 
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Comodo is a relatively new company that continues to release free software for computer security. I use their firewall, which is excellent, and will probably try their new anti-virus once it's out of beta. In any case, they pretty much have a full suite of free products for computer security at this point.

http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html
 
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Does someone know a program that helps copying old registry settings from an old harddisk to the new one (my old Win98SE installation towards my new Winxp installation) ?
 
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