FREE Great Programs for Windows 7

[Brink]

Eraser added.

 

[aln688]

Eh, no Halite?! I think it's a quite a neat torrent client, native 64-bit and very light-weight.

Alright, you don't like Halite, about this for size, Caligari TrueSpace 7.6 which was retailing for $600 but is now free ever since Micosoft bought them and decided to discontinue the product line:

trueSpace Downloads

This truly is free software!

I'm editing this post to add a free version of the Neo hex editor I use:

http://www.hhdsoftware.com/Products/home/hex-editor-free.html

 

[premier69]

Virtualbox works like a charm. totaly free.

 

[Mark Phelps]

For Samurize, please add a note that you must use compatibility mode and install as administrator; otherwise, it complains that it's not compatible and won't install.

thanks

 

[Brink]

Thank you Mark. Note added.

 

[zambz]

Great list folks! I have a lot more to add These are proggies that I am using with Windows 7 RC1 and have encountered no issues

cSFV: A really great SFV integrity check tool, allows queuing of sfv checks too. The interface is a bit ugly though

Download cSFV

Daemon Tools Lite: My favorite virtual CD drive tool, newest version works flawlessly with W7 although you will get a compatibility warning, just ignore it. Please be sure to untick the search bars .etc when installing, this is just an optional addon, but the app itself has no spyware / ad-aware.

Downloads :: DAEMON-Tools.cc

DAMN NFO Viewer: A really nice NFO viewing tool for ASCII art .etc

Download DAMN NFO Viewer 2.10.0032.RC3 - The BEST utility for viewing text files containing ASCII Art (NFO/DIZ/TXT) - Softpedia

Digsby: This is my favorite chat client, email notifier and social networking notifier all in one. It supports all the most popular social networks, chat protocols and email services. The only little issue this has on W7 is that the email notification icons appear in random order on the taskbar, in XP they were always in the same order.

The installer for this app on the official site gives you a bunch of sponsored apps to choose from before actually installing the app. To avoid this, use the following link which doesn't do this, and is the current version

http://update.digsby.com/install/digsby_setup.exe

eMule: Connects to some networks for P2P file dowloads, works well for certain things but in general is pretty slow with long queues. Worth mentioning nonetheless

eMule-Project.net - Official eMule Homepage. Downloads, Help, Docu, News...

Exact Audio Copy: This goes hand in hand with foobar2000, EAC is by far the BEST audio CD ripper on any platform, nothing even comes close! I have not attempted a rip just yet in W7, but the program appears to run fine.

Download » Exact Audio Copy

Frontah: This is a really great scriptable batch audio converter, it can read / write just about any format as long as you install the appropriate codec exe file. I use it for batch encoding my FLAC files to MP3 for iPod use

Frontah Download

FSUM: A little command-line MD5 tool, most people will probably prefer HashTab (that was mentioned above) but I still love having a commandline version. I usually place the exe in \Windows\System32 so it's instantly accessible in the command prompt. Best thing about this is that you can easily get MD5 sums for many files in a folder by using wildcards.

SlavaSoft FSUM - Fast File Integrity Checker

Notepad2: An awesome programming editor / notepad replacement. This is the only notpad alternative which feels more in place in Windows than notepad itself. I always take ownership of notepad.exe and replace it with Notepad2. A really great editor, works flawlessly in w7.

flo's freeware - Notepad2

PuTTY: A lovely SSH client which allows you to interact with unix web servers .etc.

PuTTY Download Page

Soulseek: A really nice P2P program, short queues, terrible interface though. Works well in W7.

Soulseek

Stardock Fences: Probably my favorite Windows addon, this is still in public beta but is very stable. It allows you to group / fence off your desktop icons. Everyone I have shown this program to ends up using it.

Fences™ - By Stardock - Clean up your desktop clutter

SyncBack Freeware: If you use SyncToy or similar, you should really check out SyncBack. It allows very powerful yet easy syncing of files in a source and destination location. Great for backups, I use it all the time!

2BrightSparks | Freeware

Universal Theme Patcher: The easiest way to patch uxtheme to allow for unsigned 3rd party msstyles themes. Not many available for W7 yet, but it's only a matter of time.

TCP-Z, Best TCP/IP Patch: Download Latest Version

VMWare Player: A very nice virtual machine player, allows you to use VMWare created virtual machines. This is very lightweight and much faster and responsive than Virtual PC.

Download VMware Player, Free VMware

Some tips to go alongside this:
- To create your virtual machines, you can use EasyVMX: EasyVMX!: Virtual Machine Creator
- VMWare player creates a new user that forces the login screen to appear even if your system only has 1 user. Use the following reg file to hide this user and fix the issue.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList]
"__vmware_user__"=dword:00000000

WinSCP: A really awesome FTP / SCP client, makes editing code very easy as it automatically re-uploads the file as soon as it's changed.

WinSCP :: Download

Edit: Here are a few more favorites

Filezilla: A great FTP / SCP client with excellent queing and file exist options. These days I find myself using WinSCP more, but this one is still great.

http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

SpeedRenamer: A very easy to use file renaming program. Not very advanced, but straight forward and easy

http://tinytools.objective-view.de/Tools/SpeedRenamer

KDiff: A very powerful file comparison tool (very nice for programmers). Works great in W7

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=58666&package_id=54597&release_id=665583

XnView: An excellent free image editor. Heaps of keyboard shortcuts and a built in file browser too!

http://www.xnview.com/en/downloadwin32.html

Cheers
Zambz

 

[swarfega]

Nice list there. Ive been using soulseek myself for ages. There is actually a 64-bit compiled version of putty here http://splunk.net/projects/PuTTY/PuTTY%200.60%20x64%20Installer.exe

edit: also 64-bit notepad 2 at http://code.google.com/p/notepad2-x64/

 

[gjhuff]

Google Chrome works fine under Windows 7. It is much faster than IE or Firefox, IMHO.

 

[MilesAhead]

Topmost Toggle

Another of my freeware utilities for Windows. Topmost Toggle toggles the Stay On Top attribute of the active window using Control-Right Click.

Hotkeys

Scroll about 1/2 way down the page and you'll see the download link.

 

[Brink]

Thank you MilesAhead. Added.

 

[Robert Cartman]

Media Monkey as one of the best audio player also have to be on the list!

Great job Brink!

 

[Brink]

Added.

 

[merkat106]

ITunesx64 works
Eusing Free Registry Cleaner
Picasa 3

 

[roadmark]

Yahoo Messenger 9! I consider it a great free program. Haven't tried video chat yet.

 

[Kweeveen]

Free DVD Ripper works great in Win 7 !

 

[swarfega]

Media Monkey as one of the best audio player also have to be on the list!

Great job Brink!

Media Monkey is limited in the free version, if you want all the functions then you need to buy the gold edition.

 

[NoN]

So,this a repost of UPHClean v2.0 for 32bits & 64bits systems, i believe it does work fine on WINDOWS 7 and many other platforms such Vista 32-64 Windows Server 2008... Ver 1.6 is for XP

It is made for discharge users hive profiles & prevent the OS to bumps onto unknown sessions (Kind of self cleaner). UPHClean v2.0 taking care of "the "Take Ownership" situation.

It does work fine on mine.

This, explain registry change, so be careful to backup the key before any change.
It is provided "as is".

Please read carefully at:UPHClean and other profile ramblings : UPHClean v2.0

Ha, forgot to tell, it is a self installer, no need extracting files.

 

[Charles Kane]

So,this a repost of UPHClean v2.0 for 32bits & 64bits systems, i believe it does work fine on WINDOWS 7

Hmm - this is a MS Technet Beta, and not even aimed at Win7.
I have no need of it and certainly only those with multiple used profiles might have a call for the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service.
Even then the problem it seeks to address is probably not widespread and I don't even know whether it even exists in 7.
My inclination would be to leave this (basically a registry hack) alone.
(But then, what would I know)!

 

[NoN]

so, it is good enough for those with multiple used account profiles.

It's a beta (Windows7 isn't a beta or RC one?), but it's up to you to get a final release 1.6 suppose more stable. Windows 7 can handle it.

For those that have got java (JRE or SDK) some troubleshooters might appear.

More info for previous version of UPHClean:
UPHClean and other profile ramblings

On my previous W7100 i did have a real trouble with:

"The following handles in user profile hive RCARONDOM-DC1\u1
(S-1-5-21-3230802392-3390281410-1560515013-1307) have been closed because they
were preventing the profile from unloading successfully".

UPHClean wasn't installed then, i had to clean myself the mess as it has lock my XP files in a certain circumstance, i can access through W7 (I'm on dualboot)
Couldn't boot into XP properly, windows explorer was screw up.

By the way, in the security tab of the Hard drive property don't even install this profile (S-1-5-21-3230802392-3390281410-1560515013-1307) if you click on the "owner" tab. It seems wanted to install it without your permission when you click OK. It is more painfull when it is another drive. Seems to overwritte the admistrators rights and lock some files.
All you've got to do after is to delete it and check the box to remplace object/child/parent security

 

[NoN]

Much more lightweight than OpenOffice (oOo!) for all windows platforms!
Edit many usual types of documents as OpenOffice, Word Perfect, Word, Rich Text Format, Palm, Outlook mail (with plug in)...+ more

Don't need Java installed.

AbiWord v2.6.8 (stable/official version) v2.7.2 (beta one) under GNU licence at:
AbiWord


v2.6.8 just work really fine...v2.7.2 (beta) is buggy when starting, v2.7.0 to 2.7.1 i haven't tried yet and would not as it hasn't been told stable.