Free
Helpful Essentials
Looking for an
inexpensive solution? You might find it here, in our list of free
helpful software.
A free firewall with easy
installation and configuration.
A free antivirus
program with excellent detection rates. Does have a 'nag screen' when
updating.
A free antispyware program
with lots of advanced features, including browser innoculation.
Also includes a startup
manager and registry inconsistency checker.
SuperAntiSpyware
Free or Professional
A general purpose antispyware/antimalware
tool. Easier to use for novices than Spybot. Free version is great for
on demand spyware removal, the professional version offers real time
protection and other bonus features.
A very powerful free antimalware program
that can detect and remove bad stuff other antivirus and antispyware
tools leave behind.
Browser
Safety
A free program that puts IE
in it's own 'sandbox', preventing damage to the rest of the system.
A free program that blocks
known advertisement and risk sites from being accessed.
A free antispyware program
that works with your web browser.
Firefox
Add-Ons
Allows execution of Javascript and other
plugins at your choosing. Protects against cross site scripting
vulnerabilities (XSS).
Advertisement and general annoyance blocker.
Saves bandwidth and improves page load times by preventing ads from
loading.
Firefox
Plugin Checker
Not an
Add-On, Official Mozilla Plugin Checker website. Works for Firefox and
Internet Explorer (limited).
Productivity
Software
A free and open source office software
package with many of the same features as Microsoft Office.
A powerful text editor that knows many
programming languages.
Be sure to click the link for 'binaries'.
A free java based IDE that supports many
languages and platforms.
System Tools
A free program to remove accumulated
temporary files such as browsing history and windows update uninstaller
backups.
Also has a registry cleaning feature to
remove old or broken registry entries.
A free program to allow remote
troubleshooting and support to or from any internet connected PC.
Software that allows one PC to run multiple
operating systems simultaneously and isolated from the host.
Repair Utilities
This utility repairs a broken Layered
Service Provider chain.
This utility re-enables Windows
administrative functions after a virus infection. This includes
Regedit, Task Manager, etc.
Video
Utilities
The defacto 'swiss army knife' for media
transcoding, supports nearly every video and audio format for Windows.
Avanti GUI provides a user friendly front
end for FFmpeg and Avisynth with all the required plugins for everyday
use.
FFmpeg is a command line video format
converter that is used as the backend for many video transcoding
utilities including MediaCoder and Avanti GUI.
AVISynth is a non-linear video editing tool
with many layer and filter based tools with frameserve capabilities.
