Freeware Picks

[VeryShyPerson]

Some my friends call me a "Freeware Guru." I don't know if I agree but I often can dig up nice software that doesn't cost. And is legal, too.

 

Here's a small selection of my favourites:

 

Chaos Manager - It's a very small, very lightweight PIM with appointment manager, address book, calendar, and notes.

CloneSpy - Finds and deletes duplicate files. Lots of options once you get the hang of it.

Empty Folder Nuker - It deletes empty folders.

Paint.NET - Very versatile and reliable image editor.

PlayTime - Originally it just calculated the play-time of several media files; now it's almost a full MediaInfo frontend!

Shortcut Search and Replace - Does what it says, but I mostly use it to find dead shortcuts.

 

Post your own favorites or ask here if you need something and can't find it.

[Alyxx Thorne]

OpenOffice. I prefer it to Microsoft Office.

[VeryShyPerson]

Never really was a big fan of OpenOffice.org, but that's partially because of Java...I keep a portable version on my drive in case i ever need it, but I rarely use it.

I use SoftMaker FreeOffice. Requires an email to get the license key, just use a throwaway if you want.

 

For most word processing though I use PolyEdit Lite. Its not a full-fledged word processor but I like it.

[BTGBullseye]

Technitium MAC Address Changer

For when your MAC address needs to be changed for some reason.

 

LibreOffice

Better than OpenOffice, and has more plugins/plugged-in programs... Can even write music sheets with a 50kb plugin.

 

Youtube Downloader HD

Best YouTube downloader I've found. Simple, easy, customizable...

 

SteganPEG

Steganography program. (hide password protected files and text inside picture files)

 

DeepSound

Steganography program. (hide password protected files and text inside audio files)

 

Process Hacker

A Program Manager replacement. Very powerful, and even shows you all network requests, disk access, and so on. Just get it, it's worth it.

 

ChrisPC DNS Switch

Use to change what DNS server you're using. (helps with bypassing blocks on blocked sites if your DNS is blocking them)

 

Daemon Tools Lite

The best virtual disk program out there. Used for mounting disk image files of all kinds.

 

Astroburn Lite

Used for burning disk images to a physical disk. Integrates into Daemon Tools if DT is installed first.

 

Caliber E-book Manager

It's good... Does all the different formats of E-books I can find.

 

Avast! Free Antivirus

The best free AV solution I've ever used... Kaspersky comes in second place.

 

HTTrack

Create locally run and stored offline mirrors of websites.

 

LopeEdit

Programer's replacement for Notepad.

 

Musescore

Sheet music creator/editor.

 

Nvidia Inspector

A must-have for anyone running an Nvidia video card. The ultimate tool for checking it's performance, customizing settings, and overclocking.

 

K-lite Codec Pack

It'll let you play ANY video or audio file you can find. It also has several different codecs that will actually improve the video and audio significantly more than what you'll find anywhere else. Includes Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.

 

VirtualBox

Ever want to try out Linux, but don't want to risk wiping out your computer just to install? Run it in a virtual machine.

 

RMPrepUSB

For making bootable USB drives.

 

SD Formatter

If you've ever had to format an add-in SD card when you put it in your phone, you should redo it with this. It'll add space, and reduce the wear.

 

CPU-Z

Tells you everything you could possibly need to know about the CPU in your computer.

 

MakeMKV

Convert your DVDs or Blu-ray discs to an MKV video file, unencumbered by DRM.

 

TeamViewer

Remote access and remote control of a computer. Useful for providing secure remote assistance to people having trouble with their computer...

 

O&O Defrag Free Edition

Best defragmentation program available on the market today. I highly recommend getting the pro version if you can afford it.

 

TOR Project

A secure browser for bypassing internet censorship, and thwarting most monitoring technologies.

 

PirateBrowser

A slightly modified version of TOR. Very helpful for bypassing internet censorship of sites that provide torrent files/links.

 

StaxRip

Video converter, very powerful.

 

Tixati

An ad-free torrenting client that is on-par with µTorrent.

 

Win7BootUpdater

Ever get bored with the same old Windows 7 boot screen? Ever want to see the Aperture Science logo instead? This can do it. It can fully customize your boot screen to do anything you want.

 

FXAA Post Process Injector Tool

Handy tool for doing just about any form of post processing in almost any game. (basically a GUI for injectFXAA, and SweetFX)

 

InjectSMAA

SMAA in games that don't come with it. Better AA than FXAA, but only for moving objects. Similar to motion blur.

 

Cheat Engine

Powerful debugging program. Typically used to make trainers for games, but can be used for almost any debugging. Comes with a basic training course.

 

LinuxLive USB Creator

Tool for turning a USB thumbdrive into a fully functioning Linux OS. Just plug the USB drive in, and boot to it, and you are running Linux. Does not install anything to the main HDD. Provides options for which version and distro of Linux you want to install.

 

Rainmeter

A powerful overlay for your desktop. Microsoft licensed the technology from Rainmeter to make their sidebar and widgets.

 

nLite

A tool for customizing a Windows XP install disk to add additional features/programs to the OS installation, or to prevent installation of unwanted features/programs.

 

vLite

nLite, except for Windows Vista.

 

Open Hardware Monitor

A program for monitoring all the conditions of your hardware. (power usage, voltage, temperature, total CPU/GPU processing load, RAM usage)

 

Resonic Player

A fast and high-quality music player. Try it!

[VeryShyPerson]

CodeBank2 - Plain-text tree-based....notetaker thingy. Saved files are XML.

FastStone Photo Resizer - Batch image processing.

FileMenuTools - Adds a bunch of useful tools to your Windows context menu. (Watch for third-party software in the installer).

Folder Axe - Split folders into multiple smaller folders.

Snap2HTML - Creates a cool HTML listing of any directory on your system.

symlinker - Helps create symbolic links, hard links, and directory junctions in NTFS filesystems

Shell Link Extension - So does this, but it uses the Windows context menu instead.

[Vapymid]

Far - the best ever file manager for Windows

Process Explorer - a powerful Windows process manager

TreeSize - builds a directory tree showing the size of each directory

CamStudio - screen video capture

PGCEdit - essential for DVD (re)authoring

ImgBurn - a CD/DVD/BD burner

XnView - image viewer, organiser, converter

FastStone Viewer - similar to XnView but with good RAW support

StereoPhotoMaker - well, makes stereo photos from pairs of flat images, displays stereo images in various formats.

Stereogram Lab - makes Magic Eye stereograms

Inkscape - a vector graphics editor

 

Regards

[VeryShyPerson]

CubicExplorer - my favourite file manager

TabbyFile - dual-pane file manager, pretty lightweight and very stable

Snowbird - another file manager, almost no features but extremely extremely fast

KeyTweak - remap specific keyboard keys

Pale Moon Browser - optimized version of Firefox without annoying UI changes

Unix Timestamp Calculator - converts Unix timestamps

[BTGBullseye]

Waterfox

The fastest x64 version of Firefox. It is regular Firefox, except built and optimized for 64-bit Windows. (the guy who builds it may end up doing two builds, one with and one without Australis)

 

Cyberfox

Kind of like Pale Moon, but actually up to date. (Pale Moon is only using FF24 base code)

 

Chummer

Character generator and editor for Shadowrun 4. (the tabletop RPG that the computer game is based on)

[VeryShyPerson]

ArcThemAll! - Extract or compress multiple archives at once.

DOSname - Gives you the 8.3 filename from any path or file.

PStart - System tray application launcher. Also has a notepad.

TreeCopy - Copies directory structures without all of the files.

VirusTotal Uploader - adds item to your sendto menu to quickly check files with VirusTotal

Windows System Control Center - Sticks all of the NirSoft and Sysinternals utilities into one place and also updates them for you.

[VeryShyPerson]

Not exactly freeware, but here are two registry hacks I wrote. They definitely work on Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 32-bit (my system). They likely work on 7, but can't guarantee anything. Probably not on XP.

Also, if you don't know how to add these, I wouldn't recommend mucking around in the registry anyways.

 

"Empty folder contents" in context menu

This deletes the files DIRECTLY, so be careful. I use it for cleanup after I record a demo in Source. You don't need to go into the folder which is useful sometimes.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Empty Folder Contents]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Empty Folder Contents\command]
@="cmd /c \"cd /d %1 && del /s /q *.*"

 

 

Associate files with missing extensions to Notepad

I made this one by just copying the text-file one and making a few edits to it.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.]
"Content Type"="text/plain"
"PerceivedType"="text"
@="txtfile"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.\PersistentHandler]
@="{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.\ShellNew]
"ItemName"=hex(2):40,00,25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,\
 6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,\
 00,6e,00,6f,00,74,00,65,00,70,00,61,00,64,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,2c,00,\
 2d,00,34,00,37,00,30,00,00,00
"NullFile"=""

 

 

Here's a few more software:

BabelMap - Nice unicode character map.

DesktopOK - Saves and restores desktop icon positions

Filelist Creator - Makes directory listings

RegTechy- Jump to registry keys and add favourite ones.

[VeryShyPerson]

AMP Font Viewer - My favourite font manager

Cfont Pro - Another nice font manager.

Ethervane Echo - Text-only clipboard extender.

Scrapbook - "flat file text database" - It's good for holding text snippets in one file

Starter - Nice startup manager

VidCoder - Video encoder that uses the HandBrake engine. (Because I'm too stupid to figure out Handbrake itself.)

[BTGBullseye]

Hddb - An MFT-based search tool for NTFS drives, which means it's extremely fast at locating file names, but it can't search for content.

 

CCleaner - Removes excess internet and system files you don't need, cleans the system registry, and just in general cleans the drive. Can initially free up as much as 10GB! (I got 1.73GB the first time I ran it)

 

Fast Preview - Fast image preview in the right click menu.

 

USB Device Tree Viewer - Tells you everything there is to know about all of your USB devices and hubs.

[VeryShyPerson]

splitdir - Splits directories into roughly equal-sized subdirectories - good for DVD backup. (Installer failed to make start menu shortcuts though.)

Suction - deletes subdirectories and moves files into root directory

Switcheroo- swap two filenames

Sysinternals Suite - lots of handy tools for advanced users

[Batman]

Audacity - Little surprised this wasn't already mentioned, Great sound recorder.

 

LMMS - A decent beat maker, if I had more musical talent I'd use it more.

 

Gimp - Like Photoshop

 

 

Lot of what I have was already mentioned above in previous posts, but will check out others.

[VeryShyPerson]

M3U Dropper - Makes playlists.

4t Tray Minimizer Free - Lets you minimize programs to tray or keep certain programs on top.

[BTGBullseye]

ViPER's Audio - Driver-level tweaking of audio output for Windows and Android... Equalizer, 3d effects, convolver, reverb, bass boost, crystallizer, headphone engine, normalizer...

[VeryShyPerson]

Aurora Game Hub - a game launcher/manager thing. Its nice but not what I wanted.

TagScanner - Nice music tag editor.

TeraCopy - replacement for Windows copy/paste. It claims to move files faster, which I can't verify. But I prefer its copy handler dialog to Windows' because you can pause or even verify the files afterwards.

[The_3D_Journeyman]

Here are some gems for you 3D artists out there.

 

Blender- An open-source 3D modeling, animation, and rendering package. Has add-on capability and powerful flexibility. (If you ask me, I am not fond of Autodesk Maya)

 

Sculptris - A free sculpting program. It can import and export .obj models.

 

MeshLab - Useful for reducing poly counts of things like rocks or organic things. Has other features I am not aware of.

 

xNormal - I usually use this for making ambient occlusion maps.

 

AwesomeBump - Generates normal maps, bump maps, light maps, and other maps. You can load a 3D model and see a real time preview of your texture maps applied to the model.

Edited November 11, 2015 by Guest (see edit history)

[Jeb_CC]

Paint Tool Sai - The drawing program that I use. Really neat, simple, but always has something new to learn from.

 

Aria Maestosa - MIDI recording and writing program.

 

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) - What I use to record my screen, video, or anything else. Really handy!

 

Quest - Text Adventures - An application that you can install (or just use your browser) to create text adventure games. You can also include your own code if you so desire. :3

 

Sublime Text - Nice looking code text editor! Used this for my HTML work.