All Freeware - Detailed listing in popularity order

Antivirus software provides an essential layer of protection from a multitude of virus, trojan, worm, spyware, adware, dialer, keylogger and rootkit infections. Traditionally antivirus programs just detected viruses and spyware removers just detected spyware but nowadays the boundary between antivirus and spyware removers is unclear. Most current antiviruses have at least reasonably good detection rates of all forms of malware.

Malware includes viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, dialers, keyloggers and rootkit threats that perform malicious activities on a computer. With the huge increase in malware, antivirus software cannot keep up with detecting all of it. But using more than one real-time antivirus uses much more system resources, can cause conflicts and even reduce protection. So I recommend you only choose one antivirus for real-time protection. Instead, you can increase your protection using other security software.

I looked at several free antivirus programs which are vital in protecting your computer from virus threats and other types of malware.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition is my top pick for the best free antivirus software if you're looking for the best protection against virus, spyware and rootkit threats. AntiVir is very light on resources and the detection rate of malware is outstanding, better than almost every other antivirus according to tests. However, there are some reservations.

First, quite a few users have recently complained about the signature updates being very slow or not working, and this is a serious problem. There are instructions on an alternate method to download updates here. Second, AntiVir does not include web or e-mail scanning capabilities; this is only available in the paid version. The lack of an e-mail scanner is not really a disadvantage, it just means that AntiVir won't warn you of infected emails before you open them. But should you open an infected email, AntiVir will still spring into action, so it doesn't mean that you're not protected from email-based infections. Third, AntiVir has advertisements that appear with every update, although you can disable these ads. Finally, AntiVir has a time-limited license. It is renewable, but be aware that you'll have to periodically go through the hoops. 

Microsoft Security Essentials, the newly released free antivirus by Microsoft, has a clean and modern interface, with few options to confuse users. The detection rates are very good, in particular the detection of zero-day threats and rootkits. Even more impressive, Security Essentials has very few false positives and is light on resources.

Microsoft Security Essentials is by far the best choice for average users because of the minimal user interaction required. It automatically updates and removes threats. No registration is needed, apart from a quick validating of Windows, and there are no nag screens or advertisements.

The main downsides are the slow scan speeds and the lengthy amount of time it takes to quarantine malware. MSE also is not available in certain countries so users there will have to look elsewhere. Note that Microsoft Security Essentials requires a genuine copy of Windows to install.
 

Avast! Home Edition is also an excellent free antivirus. Although its funky media player style interface is not to everyone's taste, skins can be downloaded for free, such as the MacLover OS X skin. Avast has the most features, with full real-time capabilities, including web, e-mail, IM, P2P and network shields, as well as boot-time scanning. It's also got few false positives. Avast is light on resources and is also the only antivirus to continue support for older Windows platforms, although this will be dropped in the upcoming version 5. Avast can be set to automatically remove malware through the use of their Silent Mode ("Customize" under the detailed settings for On-Access Protection Control).

On the other hand, Avast has slightly lower detection rates than AntiVir. And like AntiVir, it also requires periodic re-registration, whereas MSE and AVG Free do not.

The latest version of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition makes further improvements to an already solid antivirus program. It now includes spyware removal, phishing and email scam protection and LinkScanner Pro.

However, AVG Antivirus free has grown considerably in size and resource usage, and has very slow scan speeds. AVG also had continuous problems with updating signatures on my computer. AVG has advertisements, but they can be disabled.

These free antivirus programs are excellent software that provide a real alternative to the major commerical antivirus products.

You can increase your protection if you run on-demand scans with another antivirus. On-demand scans can be run regularly to check for viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, keyloggers, rootkits and other malware that may have been missed by your main antivirus scanner. If you have a good preventive security strategy in place, however, the extra protection an on-demand antivirus scanner offers is minimal.

You can also use one of the free antiviruses mentioned above as an on-demand antivirus scanner. One advantage is that you can set scheduled scans if you wish.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition: During the install, under "Choose Installation Type" select "Custom", and under "Install Components" untick "AntiVir Guard".

Avast! Home Edition: During the install, under "Configuration" select "Custom", and untick all the items under "Resident Protection".

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition: In the interface, open the "Resident Shield Component" and untick "Resident Shield Active".

Another option is a-squared Free, which started out as a trojan remover but has recently included the Ikarus antivirus engine. The detection rate is incredibly high, on par with AntiVir, which makes it a very good choice for an on-demand scanner. Unfortunately it has many false positives, and the large update sizes make it unsuitable for dial-up users.

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I'll also mention several popular free antivirus programs which I considered but did not include in the review because of low detection rates.

• Comodo AntiVirus (part of Comodo Internet Security)
• PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition
• Rising Antivirus Free Edition 2009

• Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover
• Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover
• Best Free Rootkit Scanner/Remover

Related Security Articles

• Best Free Firewall
• Matousec Personal Firewall Tests Analyzed
• Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use (HIPS)
• HIPS Explained
• Best Free Browser Protection Utility
• Best Free Internet Safety Check Freeware
• Gizmo's Guide to Securing Your PC
• How to Surf More Securely
• How to Improve Your Security When Using a Public Terminal
• How to Block Ads or Unwanted Content Missed by Filters
• How to Remove Google Text Ads
• Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User
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Antivirus Reviews and Testing Sites

• AV-Comparatives
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• PC World's review of Free Antivirus Software
• Remove Malware
  

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No other freeware product causes as much angst to users, whether in installation or day-to-day use, as a firewall. To find a stable and high quality firewall for windows often involves a process of trial and error. Firewalls should protect while not being too intrusive or too complicated to handle. This article gives you a selection of the best free software firewalls available.

If you want to learn more about firewalls, visit this excellent introduction on How Firewalls Work. Be sure to use only one software firewall at a time. But feel free to combine a hardware and a software firewall to improve protection. Additionally, most products highly recommend uninstalling other third-party software firewalls before installation.

Firewalls are increasingly useful to help you control the activities of Internet facing applications. It's becoming difficult to tell when applications connect online because they link so many of their features to Internet resources. Few programs stop to ask your permission. Often when you click for "Help," you find your browser launching and connecting to the Internet; sort of like asking your doctor for information and finding a needle in your arm instead of an answer. So, I predict that firewalls will be ever more important for privacy and control and choice.

I organized the article into three sections ranging from (I) broad protection and greater user involvement; (II) to basic 'firewall only' configurations and less user involvement; (III) to narrow protection and "set it and forget it" products.

I. Best Software Firewalls for Maximum Protection and Greater User Involvement

The following personal firewalls provide excellent network protection. Each firewall comes with default settings and shouldn't require tweaking except for the needs of advanced users. I provide some configuration and usage details since a little extra information may help you better answer popup alerts. I also give a few tips to help minimize alerts without letting malware through.

Still, they seem to require a fair amount of time to learn their features and they require more user involvement. But they are not as bad as the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista and they have various features that limit the extent of action required by you.

Oh, and I always create a drive image before installing a new firewall since they are known to give your PC serious problems if they conflict with anything. However, I installed and uninstalled each firewall several times during testing and had no problems.

Outpost Firewall Free is my top choice for users who want highly flexible protection without sacrificing usability. It was obviously made with average users in mind, judging by the care taken to simplify alert messages and make it easy to adjust intrusion prevention (or HIPS) monitoring. The default settings include port stealthing, self-protection, and an automatic silent mode for programs (such as games) entering full screen mode in addition to its inbound firewall and outbound HIPS components. The resource usage of Outpost is about half the size of the current version of Comodo.

The free version lacks many extras of the pay version, however, such as automatic updates, additional malware protection, anti-spam protection, and web safety features. Though, more annoyingly, the free version lacks helpful features such as breaking active connections you don't want. I also didn't like the automatic Outpost news updates, which place up-to-date advertisements for the Outpost Pro version in the interface. This being so, I see many user reports of satisfaction over Comodo and this is probably because of the extra care taken to reduce user involvement and limit outbound monitoring to a reasonable level.

The HIPS component is called "Host Protection" in the interface. It provides four default levels of protection, which can be easily set with a slider and additionally customized item by item by advanced users. The default "optimal" setting only monitors "most dangerous activities" instead of all program activities. So the default "optimal" settings lack protection from keyloggers, direct disk accessing, window hooking, DNS API request monitoring, etc. You can check the types of reduced monitoring by clicking the "customize" button in the Host Protection section. I believe the intention of the "optimal" level is to acclimate users to the firewall and provide more outbound protection than the windows firewall. After you get used to the firewall, you can increase its protection.

The installation asks users whether they want to train the firewall for a week (using its Auto-Learn mode and Rules Wizard). I'm not a fan of this feature (it's initially unchecked during the installation) and you can easily switch to it at any later point, say for an hour while you start using a new, trusted program. In my testing it greatly reduces protection during the time the firewall trains so (like with the other top firewalls) it's best to only train for short periods of time. One technical advantage over Comodo is that the self-protection component works well in all its levels of protection, whereas self-protection in Comodo depends largely on having Defense+ enabled.

Additionally, (along with the firewall from PC Tools) it's alert messages do not depend on the user to set "trusted" rules if they want to permanently automate HIPS alert responses for a program (in its maximum security settings). So it has the advantages of PC Tools firewall in usability and similar proactive security protection to Comodo in its maximum settings. Outpost also has a helpful feature to set rules automatically for known safe applications. Otherwise Outpost's maximum security settings are not much more user friendly than Comodo and Online Armor. It prompts the user with just as many popup alerts. And Outpost lacks some of the techniques used by Comodo and Online Armor to decrease the number of alerts in their maximum security settings, such as the more flexible safe programs list in Comodo or the security wizard in Online Armor. So Comodo and Online Armor have the potential to be less intrusive in their max settings, but the continual work and annoyance in configuring them reduces their advantages in user-friendliness, giving Outpost a considerable edge for many types of users.

If full featured security rather than ease of use is your criterion, then the Comodo Internet Security is the top contender. The firewall itself is very robust and includes an intrusion detection system (or HIPS feature -- called "Defense+" in Comodo). It also provides buffer overflow protection (a "memory firewall"), a training mode to automatically create rules for programs you trust, and a parental control password to automatically block all alerts (so children and inexperienced users do not make poor decisions on popup alerts). It's the only top, free firewall with full anti-keylogger protection. I found its "safe" mode setting for the Firewall quite user-friendly (in contrast to Defense+). On the minus side, the Defense+ HIPS is initially rather talkative, and this may unnecessarily alarm inexperienced users. The "Threatcast" community feature helps you respond to alerts by allowing you to see how others typically respond, but in my testing it rarely provided feedback. However, for the technically initiated who can cope with these annoyances, this is an outstanding free product.

During installation, it gives you a choice between three levels of security. The "Firewall Only" mode is discussed in the next section. The intermediate option mainly turns off some protection from Defense+, including some direct access monitoring. The "Proactive Security" configuration uses all Defense+ monitoring and increases in aggressiveness over the "Firewall Security" configuration. I recommend using the "Proactive Security" configuration (check this setting by right-clicking the tray icon and selecting configuration). You can reduce the number of popup messages you get and automate the behavior of Defense+ by (1) using the "Clean PC Mode"; (2) adding files to "My Own Safe Files" for safe mode; (3) treating applications that regularly need more access as trusted or blocked or isolated (etc.) when you get popup alerts about them. Though any of these require much knowledge and work on part of the user, and if the user gets frustrated they may allow malware through.

If you are fairly certain your PC is malware free, set Comodo to the "Clean PC Mode." In "Clean PC Mode" it automatically treats all applications on your drive as safe (but if any malware is currently hidden on your drive, it too would be considered "safe" in this mode). The exceptions to this rule are new files and applications. They get sent to a list of files "waiting for your review" in the "Summary" page. Files listed for review will be considered "possibly unclean" while you are in "Clean PC Mode" and will provoke popup messages. If you want to prevent initial alerts about these new files, you can manage the list before you run any programs listed in it -- you could empty it (if you are malware free) or add known safe applications to your safe files list. If you treat them as trusted or blocked (etc.) as you get alerts for them, this also automates the responses of Defense+ (even if you leave them in the list of new files waiting for your review).

It also has an alternative "Safe Mode" in which you will get many popup alerts at first. But Comodo limits these alerts by automatically allowing some known safe applications to run (unless you use "Paranoid Mode"). Also, if a safe program needs additional access to run, then Defense+ will alert you and you can decide whether to treat it as a "trusted application" (which, finally, ceases most alerts about it from Defense+ in every mode). If you don't add your everyday programs to your safe files list or treat them as trusted or blocked or isolated (etc.), Defense+ in safe mode seems to alert you constantly.

A solid contender is the free version of Online Armor Personal Firewall. The free version strips out its web shield (including a DNS spoof checker and a list of dangerous websites to warn you about or block). It has outstanding leak-test and HIPS performance (the HIPS feature is named "Program Guard"). And it also has the ability to set a password to block all alerts (which also makes it a "parental control;" just with a different name), but as with Comodo, this password lock will also block programs from running or accessing the Internet if user input is required. Though, its Program Guard also relies on user input and user interpretation to answer its numerous popup alerts, so this may be quite a challenge for average users. It will learn your programs so that alerts will eventually decrease over time with a combination of its automatic list of safe programs, your responses of trustworthy programs, and your on-demand scans with its "Safety check" wizard.

The installation is lengthy if you go through its "Safety check" wizard, but it will accomplish much of what you have to do manually in Comodo's max security modes: it will search your PC for programs to set as safe and it also uses its own list of safe applications to automatically allow programs to run or access the Internet. You can disable this automatic feature in the settings, but it uses an excellent popup message when it automatically allows a program (it doesn't require user action). It has a short learning phase after installation and you can use its learning mode to create automatic rules at any point later, say, for a trusted online game that gets constantly interrupted by firewall alerts. On my testing, you receive about as many alerts as Comodo's "Safe Mode" (with applications manually added to its safe files list). But I found the installation more straightforward and user-friendly.

Additionally, Online Armor was the most resource efficient on memory use. It also allows you to close both its tray tools from its right-click context menu. Both are not needed for the firewall and HIPS components to continue running and protecting, and even with the two tray tools active, it is still the most resource efficient firewall of all top contenders in this article (with PC Tools a close second).

Also a solid performer in the personal firewall class is PC Tools Firewall Plus. It provides a HIPS-like component through its "enhanced security verification," which asks the user for input about any possible malicious behavior. It relies on a whitelist of safe programs to reduce popup alert messages, so it will only ask you about unknown programs and it will remember your decisions. In the online help it discusses an option between silent and normal modes for this HIPS, but none exists in the program interface that I can find. In any case, it matched Online Armor's overall degree of protection in the Matousec tests, so obviously it's an excellent HIPS in performance. That said, it gave me nearly as many popup alerts as Online Armor and Comodo, and it still expects a learning curve and high level of knowledge from the user to respond to the many alerts. It also lacks most anti-keylogger protection.

However, one very surprising difference was the ease of installation and configuration. In fact, I didn't have to do anything; no searching for or adding programs -- it just installs and starts protecting your PC. But, of course, this means a few extra popup alerts will appear if you have rare and unknown programs not in its automatic list of safe applications. It seems to download this list with a "PC Tools Plus Service," but if you have a slow Internet connection you may experience an overall lag for any program connecting and using the Internet until the service finishes downloading. Like the other firewalls above, you can disable the automatic allow feature in the settings to take back control.

It also has a password feature that prevents users from setting permanent rules. But you can still run any program you want as long as you don't mind clicking "allow" countless times without use of the "remember this setting" feature (so it is not really comparable to the parental controls of Comodo and Online Armor). Though, it does have an interesting "Full Screen" mode or game mode that blocks all alerts while, say, you play a trusted online game. The program looks and feels user-friendly, with a simple setup and simplified alert messages, but still it's not for average users.

Please note: Currently PC Tools Firewall Plus does not support Mobile Broadband or USB network connections, an ethernet connection will be required for your connection to be correctly detected. The software will still install on your computer but will not function correctly.
 

II. Best 'Firewall Only' Configurations for Basic Protection and Less User Involvement

The same three firewalls above have alternate configurations (see below to configure them) that compare favorably to user friendly firewall products. These configurations accommodate the use of your favorite active anti-malware and HIPS programs, and they reduce the burden of answering chains of popup alerts and make them easier to manage for average users. Additionally, some users (of many degrees of experience) prefer to avoid advanced firewalls that employ a constant "security guard" that question them daily when they want to connect to the Internet, install a new program, play online games, or run their programs. The more you install and uninstall programs, the more the fancier firewalls need user involvement and extra work.

Outpost Firewall Free comes with reduced monitoring in its default settings. You can check this setting with a right click on the tray tool, click "Settings..." > "Host Protection" > the slider should be set "Optimal". This leads the section and is the best reduced monitoring configuration. It isn't quite a "firewall only" configuration, but it's much more user friendly than its maximum configurations.

If you disable behavior monitoring in the following firewalls, then they still provide excellent inbound protection, minimal/marginal outbound filtering, and additional features such as port stealthing.

First, of course, you must download and install the following software of your choice, then change their settings to reduce their level of protection/monitoring (in other words, disable their HIPS components). Here are the key settings to adjust:

• Comodo Internet Security: Right-click on its tray icon and set the "Defense+" feature to "disabled" or select the "Firewall only" configuration during installation. You will see the number of alerts significantly decrease like the others and I didn't notice a significant difference in usability from the other choices here (in this configuration). Comodo describes this as an excellent configuration for advanced users who use an alternative HIPS, but it also seems good for average users in my view (if not more so), especially when combined with a silent HIPS program.
• Online Armor Personal Firewall: Right-click on its tray icon and uncheck the "Program Guard" to disable the HIPS component (or do the same in the interface options). Be sure the firewall component is turned on, though! This would be an excellent, user-friendly choice for this sort of configuration and for use with other security layers of your liking.
• PC Tools Firewall: Uncheck "Enhanced Security Verification" and it will let you easily open your everyday applications without annoyance, but, of course, this includes malicious programs too as with Comodo & Online Armor in this basic configuration.

All three will still ask you whether unknown programs should have access to the Internet, but they will not worry if you start OpenOffice Writer to compose your next poem. They also seem to remember your responses to alerts in a simple, straightforward way. Additionally, all three have a list of programs they automatically allow. For example, I noticed that none of them asked whether Firefox should be allowed to connect online. Though, they did alert me when some of my other lesser known programs tried to go online for updates. So there will still be a learning curve in dealing with popup alerts, but the alerts settle down quickly once the firewall has a good list of rules for your Internet-bound software.

Though, these configurations will lose you important protection from malware running on your PC, such as root-kits, keyloggers, Trojans, viruses, or spyware, and dramatically increases the chance such malware will successfully make outbound connections (if you're without other security software). You would need additional security software to supplement these configurations. We have articles on options such as virtualization, HIPS and anti-malware. These are important security layers to help safeguard against malware and prevent it from harming your PC or from making outbound connections to steal your personal information or take control of your PC.

For average users who want to try an alternative, simple and lightweight free firewall, Sunbelt-Kerio Personal Firewall causes very little annoyance for the user in its default settings. Yet it also manages excellent inbound protection, with marginal outbound protection. Its 'no popup' configuration disables "Application Behavior Blocking." If you use its feature for advanced users, the behavior blocker, then its protection is better and it superficially operates more like the top three firewalls (except its performance isn't in their league). You would also have many popup alerts to handle at least initially. Some advanced features are automatically turned off after the 30 day trial period and some users experienced system crashes in the past. But I had no problems with it in my recent testing. Other user friendly alternatives include Ashampoo FireWall Free and ZoneAlarm Free Firewall.

III. Best Firewall for Novice Users

The built-in windows firewall is an excellent choice for novice or impatient users since it avoids the hassle and confusion of incessant alerts while employing excellent inbound protection. This may sound unusual; a Gizmo Freeware article advocating the use of a built-in windows product -- almost seems impossible. Most novice users, however, are simply not prepared to reliably handle the numerous popup alert messages of the best firewalls on the market.

Windows firewall is lacking against outbound malware threats, but users who merely click "yes" to each and every alert they encounter will not have the level of protection they think they have (and certainly not if the user gets so frustrated that they uninstall their maximum security personal firewall).

Additionally, it does not require installation, so it's the least likely to conflict with other programs or your PC. If you are fairly sure no malware exists on your computer and you have no use for the other features of a personal firewall, then windows firewall is actually a practical and useful solution.

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Related to Firewalls:

• Matousec Personal Firewall Tests Analyzed
• Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use (HIPS)
• HIPS Explained

Related to Security:

• Best Free Antivirus Software
• Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover
• Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover
• Spyware Removal Guide
• Best Free Browser Protection Utility
• Best Internet Safety Check Freeware
• Gizmo's Guide to Securing Your PC
• How to Surf More Securely
• How to Improve Your Security When Using a Public Terminal
• Free Password Manager: LastPass, TSA Article
• Best Free Encryption Utility

Related Firewall Testing Sites:

• Matousec Proactive Security Challenge
• GRC ShieldsUp!, Audit My PC, etc. (there are many of this type)

There are four major ways to send feedback: registered users can contact me directly here or in the forum under Contact Info. Registered users may also post in the forum. And anyone can post a comment at the bottom of this page.

It's been some time since my last round of testing, and the time has certainly come for a refresher. Adopting much the same approach as previously, I have been asked if there were any surprises, and the honest answer is yes, there have. The most significant surprise was how difficult I was finding it to infect my system in the first place. After three hours of browsing, deliberatley choosing websites and domains where infection was almost a prerequisite, I had nothing, and it was only after investigating various system settings that I found out why.

For those looking for the technical "how I did it", I once again started with a clean install of XP SP2 on a virtual machine, patched with the necessary microsoft updates. I deliberately did not upgrade to SP3. Having gotten my clean install, I backed it up, and then went off to infect it. Before doing so I downloaded installation packages for those on test, and once I had my machine infected, I backed up the infected machine. I restored the original infected machine to test each product, ensuring a level playing field for each test. Finally, I did incremental scans with each product on the same infected system.

So, the question is why was it so hard for me to get my machine infected in the first place, and having identified the "problem", my top recommendation is not an anti-malware product, and doesn't even involve a download or a scan of any type. It doesn't offer any form of protection on your PC, but it will help enormously against infection in the first place.

What is this magic solution? For some time, I have been using OpenDNS as my DNS server, rather than my ISPs own offering. I hadn't realised how pro-active OpenDNS is in the fight against drive by malware protection. Quite simply, every time I tried to visit a site guaranteed to infect me, it was simply shown as not found. During normal browsing sessions you never see this, and so it took me a while to realise the cause. Only after switching back to my ISP hosted DNS was I able to find the infections that I craved. Requiring only a quick, free registration and simple confirguration change, you improve your protections considerably.

Having made that recommendation, it is still possible to infect your system, either running software that may spread infection, or visiting sites that may not be in OpenDNS blacklist, and whilst an excellent first line of defence, local protection is still a must.

 

• Best Free Anti-Virus Software
• Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover
• Best Free Rootkit Scanner/Remover
• Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use (HIPS)
• Best Free Browser Protection Utility
• How to Secure Your PC

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Steve Hargreaves.

The comments section below is so lengthy that it has become difficult for our visitors to read. Future posts will now be edited for length and repetition, and personal attacks deleted. You are all welcome to join our Security Forum which is much better-suited  for intensive debate ... peter 

I will start with a caution. These programs no matter how good they are may sometimes cause harm to your computer. With the steps below however you can avoid most problems very easily.

Tune-up utilities are just as necessary as getting a car serviced. They keep your computer running fast and error-free. There are a variety of tasks tune-up programs can do, such as cleaning temp files, incorrect registry entries, even ensuring your privacy.

There are two scenarios that stand out where these type of programs will shine. The first example being an older computer that has been running for a longer time and needs all the resources it can get. The second is computers who run resource intensive programs, such as cutting edge computer games or video processing.

All-in-one tune-up suites are more convenient than using several individual products, but the downsides are if you are unfamiliar with all the different tools you may use some above your knowledge level.Something to keep in mind as well is some stand-alone freeware are more effective than the all in one options.

Before you start with tune-up programs there is a couple things you should always do. Most of these apply as a general rule of thumb of working with computers but I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.

1. First please make sure you have a recent restore point with Windows. Case in point as I was reviewing one of these programs it disrupted my internet connection. Having a restore point before the changes were made it took no more than five minutes to fix it.
2. Have a recent back up of your critical data
3. Check the options menu of your selected software. For example I am currently looking through Comodo's System Cleaner and they have an option to create a restore point before you clean the registry which is not selected by default. A good piece of software does a lot of the thinking for us if we allow it to.
4. Load a rescue disk onto a USB flash drive or CD/DVD

My current top choice is Ashampoo WinOptimizer 5, from Chip Online. (Thanks to For Free On Internet for the information.) WinOptimizer has a very sleek interface, with one-click cleaning for disk, privacy and registry cleaning tasks. It also has a nice option of a full scan, which gives recommendations for disabling unnecessary services, tweaking system settings, as well as the one-click cleaning features. I also like "Did you know?" tips, some of which I found quite useful. However, WinOptimizer is the only product that requires registration. Also, no further updates are provided. However, this is the best choice if you want something simple that can clean your computer with a few clicks, with no ads.

WinOptimizer offers a very basic disk and privacy cleaner; in particular, it does not clean the history of most programs. The disk defragmenter is very fast, but seems to be a bit too quick to offer good file placement. The file erasing utility is very comprehensive, with wiping options up to Gutmann and the ability to rename the files and folders before it is erased. The registry cleaner also seems very basic, detecting very little items. (Of course, registry cleaning is not simply a case of the more the better, but the result was far less than even some very conservative registry cleaners). It also has a tweaking utility with over 450 tweaks, and it's the best I've seen out of these products. WinOptimizer also has a detailed process manager, a startup manager, a system information utility, a benchmarking utility and various other tools.

Another good option is Glary Utilities. It has one-click cleaning for some tasks. One important feature that Glary does not have is disk defragmentation. This is quite a powerful product, but many of its tools require user interaction.

Glary Utilities free offers a very basic disk cleaner, but it is made up by a reasonable privacy cleaner and various tools which can remove broken shortcuts, duplicate files and empty folders. Unfortunately, I could not find an option to overwrite files in the privacy cleaner. The disk-space analysis feature is outstanding, offering the most detailed information out of these products. However, I was unable to find out what encryption algorithm Glary uses for its encryption/decryption utility, so I would not rely on it for sensitive data. Glary also contains a file and free space eraser and recovery of deleted files. The registry cleaner works very well and it also contains a registry defragmenter. The startup manager is the only product to contain a startup delayer, however, the security ratings from both the startup and process manager do not seem to be very accurate, but it could be useful for experienced users. Glary also includes a few other tools.

Comodo System Cleaner is a new offering by Comodo, the makers of the popular free firewall. System Cleaner is the only product to have scheduling options for some its features. However, it does not offer one-click cleaning. Also, System Cleaner does not have a disk defragmenter. Comodo System Cleaner is best suited for experienced users because of its potentially dangerous features.

The disk and privacy cleaner is very thorough, but could be dangerous in the hands of a beginner. System Cleaner has a wide variety of file utilities, with encryption/decryption, a rename tool and calculation of checksums, to name a few. The registry cleaning is very aggressive, maybe too aggressive in my opinion. Other features include a  minimal disk-space analysis feature, a detailed process manager, a startup manager, a rather basic tweaking utility and system information and benchmarking.

Regardless of which tune-up utility you use, I suggest you read Gizmo's Best Free Disk De-fragmenter and run one of those defragmenters regularly. The reason for this is that I believe none of the disk defragmenters provided by these suites are that effective or have scheduling/real-time options. If you use a disk defragmenter in conjunction with one of these tune-up utilities, you'll have a remarkably complete tune-up package.

Remember that cleaning your PC always involves a small element of risk, so backup your data, create a System Restore Point and have an image backup handy before you start.

I recommend that you run the tune-up programs monthly. After each monthly Windows update is an excellent time to run a clean up. If you install and uninstall many products, you may want to increase this frequency to weekly or even daily.

If you have never tuned up your PC, then you should see a real improvement in speed and responsiveness the first time you run these programs. However, on subsequent runs the improvement may be much less noticeable.

Please help us by rating this review

• Best Free File Cleaner
• Best Free Browser Scrubber
• Best Free Duplicate File Finder
• Best Free Disk Space Analyzer
• Best Free Disk De-fragmenter
• Best Free Disk Health Monitoring Utility
• Best Free Registry Cleaner
• Best Free Registry Editor
• Best Free Startup Manager
• Best Free Process Viewer
• Best Free Program Un-installer
• Best Free System Information Utility
• Best Free Memory Optimizer
• Cleanup Kit

• Find Downloadable E-Books Using This Free PDF Search Engine
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Malware, trojans and threats

Most PCs are now connected to the Internet and networks, making easier the spread of malicious software (malware), which includes trojans (also known as trojan horses), viruses, worms, spyware, adware, rootkits and other malicious or unwanted programs.

Like spyware and adware, trojans can get onto your computer in a number of ways, including from a web browser, via e-mail, or in a bundle with other software downloaded from the Internet.  You may also inadvertently transfer malware via a USB flash drive or other portable media.

Unlike viruses or worms, trojans do not replicate themselves but they can be just as destructive. On the surface, trojans appear benign and harmless, but once the infected code is run, trojans kick in and perform malicious functions to harm the computer system without the user's knowledge.

For example, waterfalls.scr is a waterfall screen saver as originally claimed by the author, but it can be associated with malware and become a trojan to unload hidden programs and allow unauthorized access to the user's PC.

Some typical examples of threats by trojans are as follows:

• Erase, overwrite or corrupt data on a computer
• Help to spread other malware such as viruses (by a dropper trojan)
• Deactivate or interfere with anti-virus and firewall programs
• Allow remote access to your computer (by a remote access trojan)
• Upload and download files without your knowledge
• Gather e-mail addresses and use them for spam
• Log keystrokes to steal information such as passwords and credit card numbers
• Copy fake links to false websites, display porno sites, play sounds/videos, display images
• Slow down, restart or shut down your computer
• Re-install themselves after being disabled
• Disable the task manager

To minimise the threats, most PC users will need an effective anti-malware program to remove trojans along with other malware.

Anti-malware and anti-trojan programs

As more computer security developers are extending their product capabilities to address more than one type of malware, the boundary between different types of anti-malware programs is no more a clear cut and has become blurred.

For example, an anti-virus program such as AVG Anti-Virus covers not only viruses, but offers protection against spyware, adware and others. An anti-spyware program such as SuperAntiSpyware not only detects spyware, but removes trojans, rootkits and other threats. Likewise an anti-trojan program can offer to remove viruses, spyware and other types of malware.

More appropriately, these security products are to be classified as anti-malware programs rather than to be grouped by the name of the products.

In this respect, anti-malware products which are designed to detect and remove trojans more effectively than the others will be reviewed in this category.

How many anti-malware programs need to install?

Disclaimer

Despite their ratings in this review, some anti-malware programs in certain cases are able to detect more malware than the others depending on their designs, online databases and the infections on computers.

• Rising PC Doctor comes with a scanner for trojans and spyware, and an option to enable automatic protection such as Trojan Interceptor, Trojan Download Blocker along with some other protections. Other tools such as start up control, process manager, service manager, file shredder, etc., are also included.
 
• SDFix is a free trojan removal program written by AndyManchesta to remove trojans along with other malware such as worms, rootkits and others. It requires rebooting the system into safe mode to run the program.
 
• Trojan Killer is a malware removal application to remove various types of malicious or unwanted programs such as hidden dialers, adware, spyware, etc. Dangerous items are highlighted in red after scanning and can be removed with a right click. Current database has relatively fewer signatures as compared to a-squared Free.
 
• Comodo BOClean Anti-Malware features automatic detection of trojans and other malware in the background with daily database updates. It covers approximately 70,000 trojans in the current database as shown in the list produced by the program with a click on the "Covered Trojans" button.

• Best Free Anti-Virus Software
• Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover
• Best Free Rootkit Scanner/Remover
• Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use (HIPS)
• Best Free Browser Protection Utility
• Gizmo's Guide to Securing Your PC

anti-malware, anti-trojan, anti-virus, anti-spyware, adware, remover, scanner, freeware, free trojan scanner, free trojan remover

Despite the technology world’s efforts to eliminate moving parts in computers, optical mediums such as CDs and DVDs are still widely used and most average users still need to burn optical discs. Whether backing up data, preparing an audio mix CD, or creating a bootable Linux disc, finding the right burning software is essential. I have determined what I believe to be the best free solutions available for this purpose. However, no software can be everything to everybody, so try a few different options before you decide on the right one for your needs.

After considering many comments from the readers and investigating various programs, I have chosen four applications to receive spots for the category of Best Free CD / DVD Burning Software. I believe that the combination of these programs will satisfy the needs of all types of users.

Although choosing the one best product was difficult, I have decided that ImgBurn should take the title. ImgBurn is the most powerful burning application I can find, for no other software comes close to its advanced features and options.

ImgBurn includes support for:

• every modern optical disc from CD to Blu-Ray
• more than 10 image formats
• authoring rewritable discs
• producing images from file compilations or discs
• building audio CDs from a variety of file types
• creating video discs on DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD
• enabling access to drives for restricted users
• endless tweaking of all aspects of the burn process

Unfortunately ImgBurn’s advanced features do come at the cost of a badly organized interface that may confuse users who just want to do a basic burn. The welcome menu provides quick access to some common tasks, but other basic features such as erasing a rewriteable disc are not immediately visible. Playing around with ImgBurn for a while and exploring the menus will certainly reveal most of what you need. However, people who aren’t interested in advanced functionality will most likely want to look at my other recommendations. Although ImgBurn is primarily aimed at advanced users, I still feel that it is the most worthy product for the top spot in this category.

The application that I feel is most suited for average users who want a full feature set without the complications that advanced options bring, is BurnAware Free. Under most circumstances, I wouldn’t choose the limited version of a commercial product as one of the best, but BurnAware Free is too impressive to ignore. It has the best interface I have seen in a burning application, and all of its features are neatly organized in a logical setup that makes any task a painless effort. Despite its simplicity, it does most of what you could want from a burning application. Unlike ImgBurn, BurnAware Free does not include advanced options for adjusting every aspect of the burn, and it lacks a few features that advanced users may find necessary.

BurnAware does not include support for:

• copying discs or saving discs to images
• making bootable discs from a compilation of files

I was unable to determine if dual layer discs are supported because I do not have any to test and because the program’s website does not specify. On the positive side, BurnAware Free supports CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs. It even allows you to create audio CDs and video DVDs, and you can burn ISO images as well as erase rewriteable media. BurnAware Free is my personal favorite disc burning application, and I will use it for the majority of my burning needs. I highly recommend it for the average user who doesn’t need advanced features, but wants an easy way to burn a disc quickly.

CDBurnerXP, my choice for the third spot, is an admirable burning application that combines functionality with simplicity. It supports all types of optical media including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. CDBurnerXP matches the majority of ImgBurn’s main features and even includes some extras of its own. It is the only free burning application I have found that includes some support for LightScribe disc labeling. The label designer is pretty basic and not suited for specialized label creation, but it is a decent solution for basic tasks. The program also includes full support for command line operation for those who prefer a terminal over a graphical interface.

Although CDBurnerXP is not as advanced as ImgBurn or as simple as BurnAware Free, it has a respectable interface that makes most burning tasks straightforward and fast. The biggest drawback for some users is the program’s dependency on the .NET framework, which means that running the portable version from a flash drive will only work if the host computer has Microsoft’s .NET Framework installed. I do not personally like CDBurnerXP because I feel that between ImgBurn and BurnAware Free, my burning needs are covered. Nonetheless, I recommend trying it out if you need a full set of features without the troubles of a complicated interface.

I cannot write a fair review of free burning software if I don’t include InfraRecorder, so I am listing it as my fourth choice. InfraRecorder is a stable project that has been popular for quite a long time. It supports all of the common features that a good burning application should have, and it works with all types of CDs and DVDs including dual layer discs. It even includes full command line support like CDBurnerXP. With InfraRecorder, you can burn and create images with support for bootable discs, author rewriteable discs, and create audio CDs and video DVDs. The interface is clean and simple without a lot of extras to make things confusing.

InfraRecorder is a respectable burning program, but it has a few disadvantages as well. It does not support Blu-Ray discs or HD-DVDs. It also does not include many advanced options for tweaking the burn process to perfection like ImgBurn. Its interface isn’t as nice as that of BurnAware Free, and it doesn’t have any extra features like CDBurnerXP. Aside from these possible downsides, it feels like a solid program that definitely deserves a chance at becoming a part of your favored software collection.

This software category is maitained by volunteer editor m.broderick

The registry is what keeps your computer running; it tells the computer what to do when certain events happen. However, as you use your computer, a lot of unwanted and unnecessary information is written into the registry, and this usually occurs because you've installed and uninstalled programs or updated versions of existing programs. This gradual accumulation of unneeded or incorrect information will, over time, slow the speed of your computer.

A registry cleaner tries to get rid of this unwanted data and restore your PC to full speed. The problem is that the cleaning process is less than perfect. In particular, there is always a small risk that the registry cleaner may incorrectly remove data that is actually needed. In the worst case scenario, your PC may become unusable as a result.

That's why it's absolutely essential that you backup your registry before using a registry cleaner. For most users the easiest way to do this is to create a system checkpoint.  An even better way is to use a drive-imaging program to create a snapshot of Windows, which you can use for system recovery if needed. As an added layer of protection, that may actually be more effective than System Restore, consider using the excellent ERUNT utility.

This ever-present risk of problems is why the "best" registry cleaner is the one that causes the fewest problems, rather than the one that finds the greatest number of registry errors.

Thus it is evident, a registry cleaner is - if at all - a tool reserved for the experienced user. The inexperienced may be assured that since the introduction of Windows XP, registry cleaning is no longer a crucial issue for the stability, security and performance of your system. Don't mess around with it!

EasyCleaner : Historically, it has proven that it doesn't create problems, and it periodically updates its list of "registry values" that must not be cleaned under any circumstance. Its main drawback is the lack of a backup function.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner is our recommendation. Free, simple, fast and offers the indispensable option to backup the registry.

Finding an all-in-one media player used to be impossible.  In the past you needed to use several separate programs to play MP3 files, streaming media from Real, Mpeg files, Quicktime movies, CDs and DVD discs, but with the advent of Microsoft's Windows Media Player (WMP), all of these media types could be played in one player.  Over a period of time, however, WMP for XP and Vista has become bloated and isn't compatible with all of the available file formats.  WinAmp, which began as an mp3 player, now plays almost everything, although it uses a lot of system resources and may contain adware if you aren't careful on the installation.  iTunes has become more prevalent on many PCs due to the almost universal reach of the IPod, but it also uses a lot of resources and is processor intensive.  So I've done some major research to find alternative media players capable of playing all of these media formats, including digital music, video, CD, and DVD, while still being light on resources.  I was impressed with what I found.  Not only do these programs replace WMP ITunes and WinAmp,  but they also exceeded their functionality.  The products that I've reviewed here are capable of playing multiple types of media files, including various digital audio and video formats, CDs, and DVDs.  They are also easy to install and use and are light on system resources.

NOTE:  Some of these programs may require additional codecs for expanded functionality.  For more information about codecs, including what they do, legal issues and download links, see the article, "Understanding Codecs".

 After careful review and consideration, The KM Player, now holds the "Best Pick" spot for this category.  There are many reasons for this but the big ones include ease of use and installation, awesome playback, and no need for extra codec packs.  Originally the work of one programmer, the project is now owned by Pandora TV and continues to be developed.  On a default install, it is configured to play almost any media file available without the need for additional codecs, making it easy to use for those with less experience.  Yet if needed, it can be configured to selectively use any codecs you have installed yourself.  This means that one can have full control over which codecs and filters The KM Player will use, thus preventing media playback from being messed up.  Among its other features, The KM Player can set multifarious audio and video effects, slow down or increase playback speed with regular tone, select parts of a video as favorites, do an exceptionally powerful A-B repeat, remap the keys of remote interface for HTPC including overlay screen controls, and change a skin dynamically depending on the type of media you wish to play.  Plus it is completely customizable thanks to a wide selection of skins and color schemes. In short, the configuration options of The KM Player are the most extensive I've ever seen.  But keep in mind that many features means a larger program.  Weighing in at over 13 MB, The KM Player is one of the larger downloads of the products reviewed here.

My thanks to everyone who suggested The KM Player, especially subscriber Sandeep, whose comments were helpful in creating this review.

For a long time, I have been a fan of Media Player Classic due to its ease of use, simple installation, and powerful features.  Unfortunately, development on this particular project has stopped, but there is a great replacement:   Media Player Classic - Home Cinema. Like its predecessor, It is an incredibly small program but has a vast feature set.  Available only for Windows (NT - 7), MPC Home Cinema looks like the old Windows Media Player v6.4, but that's where the similarity ends.  Under the hood, this program packs a lot of features, including codecs for viewing DVD discs, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG 4 and x.264 movie files, MP3 and Ogg files.  It can also use the QuickTime and the RealPlayer architectures (if installed on the computer) to play their native files.  To further extend its functionality while avoiding the installation of RealPlayer, WinAmp and Quicktime, you will have to download some codec packs.  (We recommend ffdshow, Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative and WinAmp Alternative packages).  They will make sure there will be almost nothing you won't be able to play. MPC Home Cinema  is the only product reviewed here that requires no installation on your PC.  This means that it can be run from your USB flash drive as well as your hard drive.  (Note:  there is some dispute over the legality of Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative codec packs.  ffdshow is opensource, completely legal, and should cover almost all of your needs.) 

MPC Home Cinema has many additional functions above and beyond the original MPC including:  The option to remove Tearing, better support for Windows Vista (including a release for 64 bit platforms), support for EVR (Enhanced Video Renderer) and playback and recording of television if a supported TV tuner is installed.

Another excellent player is VLC Media Player.  VLC is available for multiple OSs, including all versions of Windows (98 through Vista), Mac OS X, and many varieties of Linux.  VLC can also be installed and run directly from a flash drive.  Most versions will support playback of most video files and DVD discs without the need to download external codec packs, including flv files, which MPC cannot natively play.  VLC has another unique feature as well.  There are 5 different DVD region codes.  DVDs manufactured for one region will not play in players made for a different region.  This applies to PC DVD drives as well... until now.  VLC plays them all.  There is no need for any shady (and possibly illegal DVD region spoofing programs).  This is especially nice if you're an international traveler and want to watch a movie on your laptop outside of your country. VLC also has the ability to convert videos to formats it supports and like KM Player, you can specify whether or not to use system codecs.  VLS also has the ability to take screenshots of your video, even while during DVD playback, a real attractive feature.

Another good alternative is GOM Player.  Available only for Windows (98Se through Vista), it also will play most media files, including flv files with its own internal codecs.  If, however, you come across a file it cannot play, it will direct you to the appropriate open-source codec to install.  The program is a little quirky, though.  I tried to play a DVD disc on two different PCs using GOM... On one it would not play it at all (and this was a machine I've been able to play DVD discs on before), while on the other PC it played it fine.  One very noteworthy feature of the GOM player is its ability to play broken media files.  According to subscriber Ash, "GOM Player's claim that it can play broken avi files is very true.  We have a file sharing network on campus which uses DC++. Usually avi files which are being downloaded stop partway due to too much traffic. GOM Player was able to play every one of those files on my system up to the point where they stopped downloading."

• Installing Media Player Classic - A step by step guide
• Best Free Music Players and Organizers
• Best Free CD/DVD Burning Software
• Best Free Audio/Video Format Conversion Program
• Best Free Video Editor
• Best Free Streaming Media Recorder
• Best Free Audio Editing Software
• Best Free Screen Session Recorder
• Best Free Digital Image Viewer
• Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

Welcome to the editors' choice list, where you'll find a collection of the best free software on our site. Many of the software products on this list won the coveted "Gizmo's Top Pick" award.

You'll find only the best free software products here, many as good as or better than their commercial counterparts. Our choices include a broad selection of must have free programs, exquisitely rare freeware treasures, reliably effective freeware, and editor favorites.

To get into this list a product must have done more than win a Gizmo's Freeware award; it must also impress our editors with its usefulness and professionalism. One of the most convenient measures of product "usefulness" is article popularity. So the freeware products on this list are from our most popular articles, but we exclude redundant top picks and any programs that are mostly a placebo.

Usually our top software picks must win in a competitive, Darwinian struggle against many rival programs!

We suggest you browse the whole list at your leisure as you may be surprised what freeware gems you will discover. The pathologically impatient can use the category index below.

Security & Privacy: Antivirus - Firewall - Virtualization - Antispyware - HIPS - Anonymous Surfing

Cleanup & Tune: PC Tuneup - Defrag - Registry Cleaner - File Cleaner - Uninstaller - Startup Manager

Disk & File: Drive Imaging - Backup Program - Folder Synch - Zip Utility - File Manager - Partition Manager

System Tools & Desktop: Software Update Monitor - Screen Capture Utility - Screen Information Utility

Multimedia: Media Player - CD & DVD Burner - Audio & Video Conversion - Music Player - MP3 Tagger...

Image Tools: Image Viewer - Image Editor - High Dynamic Range (HDR) Software - Photo Organizer

Home & Office: Office Suite - Software Suite - PDF Writer - PDF Reader - PDF Tools

Internet Tools: Web Browser - Email Client - BitTorrent Client - Download Manager - Remote Access

Still Reading? Jump Down to Games, Lists, Tutorials, & More

Security Advice

• Security Advice Wizard: Get personalized results and our security team's up-to-date suggestions.
• Mega Security List: Read Ako's excellent suggestions.
• Gizmo's Guide to Securing Your PC: Increase computer security with safe practices.
• Spyware Removal Guide: Clean up after using bad practices or verify that you are malware free.

Antivirus Software (Using more than one real-time antivirus can cause conflicts, consume system resources heavily, and even reduce protection, so we recommend one antivirus for real-time protection.)

• Avira AntiVir Personal Edition: "My top pick if you're looking for the best protection against virus, spyware and rootkit threats. AntiVir is very light on resources and the detection rate of malware is outstanding." If updates are a problem try the alternative manual method.

Firewalls (Many people just use windows firewall for sanity's sake, but in any case only install 1 software firewall and consider making a fresh drive image or restore point before installing.)

• Comodo Internet Security: "The security effectiveness of the firewall and application monitor (Defense+ HIPS) exceeds the performance of many commercial products. On the minus side, it's rather talkative and this may unnecessarily alarm or annoy users." It has adjustable protection if you think it requires too much user involvement. The antivirus component is optional on install.

Virtual Protection and Internet Safety (Browser Protection Utilities, Internet Safety Freeware)

• Sandboxie: "Creates a special sandbox environment on your PC [either for web browsing or any program]. So that within the virtual sandbox provided by Sandboxie the vital portions of your PC are totally isolated... If set correctly, any spyware, Trojans, keyloggers or other malware products that 'infect' your PC while browsing will be eliminated. It can cause problems on some PCs so backup before installing."
• WOT: "Fast ratings about possible malicious websites, multiple categories of ratings, and provides reports with user comments and more information. Uses a fantastic warning or blocking screen to empower users to avoid potentially bad websites without filter 'censorship'."
• LinkExtend: "Uses multiple free sources to maximize security ratings and other categories of site ratings, feature rich."

Adware/Spyware/Scumware Removers

• OpenDNS: "After only a quick registration and configuration change, it considerably improves your pro-active protection against drive by malware. It's an excellent first line of defense, but local protection is still a must."
• SuperAntiSpyware: "Top of the list once again in detection and removal of malware, with a fairly lightweight download and simple installation."
• MalwareBytes Anti-Malware: Recommended by our security wizard and others as a top pick.

Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utilities (HIPS)

• DriveSentry: "Excellent default settings for novices, but also highly configurable for more experienced users and less likely to cause problems than some of the alternatives."

Anonymous Surfing Services

• OperaTor: "A portable version of Opera with a well integrated Tor engine that uses the free Tor network. It is small and relatively fast, but not open source."
• JonDo (alternatively, if this site is down try here): "It's more flexible by allowing the user to configure it for their choice of browser. Vidalia is a close next pick and it generally feels faster, but it may not have the same level of anonymizing as JonDo."

Related Top Picks: a-squared Free, LastPass, TrueCrypt

All-in-one PC Tune-up Utilities

• Ashampoo WinOptimizer 5: "Very easy to use, sleek interface, and excellent tweaking tool." Free with license key.

Disk De-fragmenters

• MyDefrag: "Pure gold. Beats everything out there with a simple interface, fast optimization options, and optimal defragging."

Clean Excess Junk (File Cleaners, Registry Cleaners)

• CCleaner: "It's very effective in freeing up disk space by removing unused and temporary files, cookies, Recycle bin entries, Windows hot-fix files, old prefetch data, history and cache files in many applications... Additionally, it will check the Windows Registry for invalid entries." And it also provides secure erasing.
• Eusing Free Registry Cleaner: "Free, simple, fast, and offers the indispensable option to backup the registry."

Program Un-installers

• Revo Uninstaller: "It is the only freeware product I know of that will make a decent job of cleaning up a failed install."

Startup Managers

• WinPatrol 2009: "My personal favorite because as well as startup management (including a very useful "delay" enhancement, which may smooth-out booting), it includes a plethora of other features."
• Autoruns (also runs online): "The top startup manager for technical users."

Related Top Picks: Eraser, Duplicate Cleaner, CleanMem

Drive Imaging Programs

• Macrium Reflect Free: "Easy to use and a fast way to create a disk image. Use it to return your PC to the exact state it had been in at the moment a disk image was created, thus saving maybe a day's work reinstalling and configuring all the programs."
• Acronis True Image: "Always the top choice if you can get it for free, perhaps during one of the many promotions, or with a Seagate or Maxtor disk - it's in their Disk Tools software, a 126.75 MB file that you must download from the Seagate website."

Backup Programs

• GFI Backup (Home Edition): "Has easy to use wizards and supports numerous backup locations. You will find GFI's user experience similar to Titan Backup, with some nice extras."

Folder Synchronization Utilities ("Synchronization utilities are important in helping you keep identical versions of your files or folders, say, on both your home computer and office computer.")

• SyncToy: "This is more than a syncing program: it can copy, move, rename, and delete files between any number of folders and even computers."
• Allway Sync: "If you need a synchronization solution that supports older Windows versions, ftp, and portability, then check out Allway Sync."

File Archiver/Zip Utilities

• 7-Zip: "Easy to install, gives meaningful error messages, capable of uncompressing from multiple embedded files."

File Managers

• xplorer² lite: "It offers more functionality than Windows Explorer, but with an interface sufficiently similar to Explorer that most users will find it easy to learn and use."

Partition Managers

• EASEUS Partition Master (Home Edition): "Intuitive and user-friendly interface, features include resize, move, copy, create, delete, hide, unhide, convert, explore and format partitions with a single step."

Related: IsoBuster, jDiskReport, PC INSPECTOR File Recovery, Active@ HD Monitor, DriverMax

Software Update Monitors

• Update Notifier: "It is very easy to use, detects more programs than Update Checker, detects some programs that SUMo is as yet unable to detect and is typically the first update monitor to detect an update."

Screen Capture Utilities

• PicPick: "User friendly, captures full screen, active window, object, rectangular, fixed or freehand region. Supports auto-scroll, dual monitors, sound effect and multi formats. An image editor is included, plus extra features such as color picker, screen ruler, protractor, crosshair and whiteboard."

System Information Utilities

• System Information for Windows (SIW): "My current favorite for home use. It displays many detailed specs such as CPU, memory, devices, installed programs, processes, services, network, and page file usage."

Related Top Picks: TCPOptimizer, Process Explorer, ArsClip, Spotlight on Windows, Memtest86+

Related Top Picks (Desktop & GUI): Dexpot..., Launchy..., QTTabBar..., Copernic Desktop Search, Cathy

Media Players

• The KM Player: "Easy to use and install, awesome playback, and no need for extra codec packs, making it easy to use for those with less experience. Other features include setting multifarious audio and video effects, slow down or increase playback speed with regular tone, etc."

CD / DVD Burning Software

• ImgBurn: "Most powerful burning application with advanced features, support for every modern optical disc from CD to Blu-Ray, more than 10 image formats, authoring rewritable discs, etc."

Audio & Video Format Conversion

• Koyote Soft Free Video Converter: "A nearly perfect video converter, with a simple interface, a reasonable amount of tweaks for custom jobs, and great support for common devices."
• FormatFactory: "It supports dozens of devices; the interface is very slick, responsive, and stable; and advanced tweaks and adding files is a snap."

MP3 and Other Music Essentials (Music Players and Organizers, CD Rippers, MP3 Tag Editors)

• Jaangle (formerly Teen Spirit): "Intuitive and user-friendly interface for playing music, excellent library for music managing, interesting download capabilities of artist photos/bios, song lyrics, etc."
• AIMP 2: "Excellent features for organizing and playing music, comes with all necessary tools for building a music library, and has a visually stunning design."
• Exact Audio Copy: "Rips CD imperfections and scratches with ease. But use CDex if you need to convert to many types of formats."
• TagScanner: "Supports basic and extended tags, complete with Music Renamer and Tag Processor. It allows you to preview tag information and cover art from online databases like freedb or Amazon. But if you prefer a more normal user interface then Mp3tag is a good alternative. "

CD & DVD Emulation Software

• Gizmo Drive: "Support up to 26 virtual drives, create ISO image, burn ISO files or folders to recordable disks, complete with Gizmo Manager and Image Wizard to perform tasks."

Media Editing (Audio Editing, Video Editors)

• Audacity: "Interface is easy to use, easily applies noise profiles, capable of saving in multiple compressed formats."
• Avidemux: "Supports many file types including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF. It's simple and easy to use, with well documented tutorials."

Internet Media Viewing/Capturing (Online TV Viewers, Streaming Media Recorders)

• JLC's Internet TV Viewer: "A simple, but effective TV streams viewer that doesn't have much overhead."
• CamStudio: "My personal favorite for on-screen media capture and recording because the output is in the more widely used .AVI and .FLV formats."

Related Top Pick: DVD Profiler

Digital Image Viewers

• XnView: "Fast, lots of features, very manageable, many plug-ins, supports nearly any OS."
• IrfanView: "This product is first-class and a real winner. It's amazingly capable and fast at displaying images."

Digital Image Editors

• LightBox Image Editor: "My top pick for basic image editing because it has an attractive user interface and it's simple and straight forward to use."
• Paint.net: "It's a very good choice for mid-level photo retouching because of its excellent design and attractive interface. It also has options and tools comparable to commercial software, but it requires you to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or newer."

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Software

• Qtpfsgui: "Comes out slightly ahead of the several HDR software packages. It has great tone-mapping and aligning facilities, allows 8, 16 and 32 bit channels and two means of manually manipulating the image."

Digital Photo Organizers

• Picasa 3: "Simply sensational editing features that provide you with every function amateur photographers need."

Related Top Picks: Project Dogwaffle, Noiseware Community Edition..., Microsoft ICE...

Home Essentials: Word Processing & More (Office Suites, Software Suites)

• OpenOffice 3: "Covers the basics of office document creation: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, a desktop database. It allows you to save your documents in many choices of file formats so you'll have no problem exchanging documents with MS Office."
• Liberkey: "A true 'Swiss Army Knife' of free programs that comes in three sizes: basic (28 programs), standard (100 programs) and ultimate (200 programs)."

PDF Viewers and More (Non-Adobe PDF Readers, PDF Writers, PDF Tools)

• PDF-XChange Viewer: "Loads reasonably fast, can print PDFs, allows basic annotation without watermarking, good text clarity, allows you to fill and save Adobe PDF forms, extract text and images, magnify text, and export PDF pages or documents to BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PNG formats."
• Bullzip PDF Printer or PDFill Writer: "Both have more of the options I need and have worked flawless for me. All of the PDF writers in this review function by creating a pseudo printer on your system."
• PDFill PDF Tools: "Clean and nice user interface, includes most features such as merge, split, reorder, rotate, header and footer with page number, watermark, encrypt and decrypt, convert PDF to images or vice versa, convert PostScript to PDF."

Related Top Picks (Home & Office): Jarte, GnuCash, Palm Desktop..., PolyEdit Lite, Stickies

Web Browsers

• Mozilla Firefox: "It browses a tad faster than IE, is very stable and more standards compliant. It has thousands of Add-Ons to enhance the program and is very secure."
• Opera: "Extremely fast at loading pages, loads of features. There's so much to like about it you could easily create a case that it's better than Firefox. Though, alas, there are not nearly as many widgets available as there are Firefox extensions."
• SRWare Iron: "Looks and acts almost exactly like Google Chrome, but without sending any information back to Google's servers. Amazingly fast at loading pages, minimalist interface, with impressive features such as an Incognito Mode for privacy."

Email Clients

• Mozilla Thunderbird: "Customizable and expandable through add-ons, intuitive user interface."

Download Managers

• Gigaget: "The fastest by far to download files, monitor major browsers and clipboard, resume/pause download, import/export list, data transfer encryption, and classification of downloaded files."

BitTorrent Clients ("Quickly became an important download format for its speed, efficiency, and cheapness in distributing content over the Internet.")

• Vuze (formerly Azureus): "Cross platform, informative interface, wide variety of plugins, excellent support and the Vuze platform of legal content that downloads at high speeds."
• µTorrent: "Small, efficient (lowest memory use of all clients), many features and excellent support."

Remote Access Software ("Remotely administer another computer for off-site troubleshooting or for accessing your home PC while traveling.")

• UltraVNC: "Offers all the features you need, including auto-configuration, easy user interface, extensive hotkeys and embedded file transfer. Add to that the fact that it's free, secure, reliable and reasonably speedy and you have a winner. "
• LogMeIn: "Possibly the fastest most reliable remote control freeware available. It will even allow a PC to remotely control a Macintosh. Excellent tool for accessing home computer or friends/family computers from anywhere."

Related: KompoZer, HTML-Kit..., Fire FTP..., NetMeter..., WireShark, Nmap..., NetworkStumbler, Digsby...

Check out these other articles and lists on our site. There are so many hot suggestions here you will be glad you kept reading and clicking.

Top 8 Miscellaneous Articles or Lists or Guides (from Recently or All Time Most Popular):

• 100+ Places for Free Books Online
• Best Free Windows 7 / Vista 64 bit Software
• How to Make Vista Run Faster
• Keroffs & Speed: Optimizing µTorrent, Optimizing Vuze, Optimizing the Transmission
• Best Free Vista Tweaks
• Best Free Portable Applications
• The Top 5 Video Streaming Websites
• Gizmo's Desert Island Utilities

Gizmo's Other Top Guides (from How To Guides and Tutorials):

• How to Back up Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird
• How to Disable Internet Explorer
• How to Move the My Documents Folder
• How to Make Firefox Load Faster
• How to Hide a Windows Folder
• Never Re-install Windows Again (Partitioning and Imaging Hard Drives): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

How About Some Games?

• 10 Best Free Game Sites
• Bob & Games: Computer Chess, Computer Go, Lego Building Software
• 250 Best Free Online PC Games In One Place
• Sandbox Games
• Jojoyee & Games: Match-3, Jigsaw Puzzles & Creators, Chinese Chess

How About Some Education?

• Rhiannon's Finds: Free Harvard Computer Course, 200 Free Online Classes, Wikipedia, Reloaded
• The Things to Come Page (for Fans of Science Fiction Movies)
• Best Free Typing Tutor

Be sure to check out our Home Categories, Everything List, Forum, and Gizmo's Feed.

And browse these other recommendations: Tech Treats, Hot Finds, Freeware Updates, Tech Websites.

A disk defragmenter is a key toolkit element for keeping your PC running optimally. Disk fragmentation occurs through normal everyday use of your PC; over time your system becomes unable to store related data on your disk in a sequential (contiguous) manner, and must "fragment" files across different physical locations on your hard drive. This increases the number of times your hard drive must spin (or "seek"), which slows down the process of reading and writing files. Defragmentation software compresses files and free space back into contiguous blocks.

Here is an example of a contiguous file system:

Here is an example of a fragmented file system:

Defragmenting your hard drive on a regular basis is a sound housekeeping habit; a chore that most home users should do once a month. By Defragmenting your system, one can greatly increase system performance. Your computer will be able to read files much quicker. It will also relieve stress on your hard drive.

Our top pick here is MyDefrag, which is actually the successor to a very popular program called JkDefrag. JkDefrag has been a favorite among many computer users for years. It provides stability and performance within a very lightweight package. I've been folowing MyDefrag since its beta, and I have been very impressed with the software. Unlike many programs, the software itself has no real GUI, or user interface. Instead, once you install it, there is a list of functions located within the start menu. These options include: Slow Optimize, Fast Update, Fast Optimize, Flash Memory Disks, Analyze only, and Defragment only. Once one selects an option, it automatically applies that process to all disks on the computer. Aside from the Slow Optimize, all the processes run very fast. With other defragmenters, I was always irritated because no matter how many times I would defragment, upon analyzing afterwards, I would still have fragmented files that refused to defragment. MyDefrag completely solved the problem for me. Those stubborn files were ironed out and in my testing I personally saw increases in disk performance. 

Close behind is Defraggler – a solid combination of performance, stability and usability from Piriform. We have been watching Defraggler since its Beta release and now that some of the early bugs have been ironed out with its most recent version, it’s a good, safe bet. With a very clean interface design based on the common Windows defrag interface, Defraggler is incredibly easy to use and offers all the options you need to keep your machine running smoothly – including the ability to defragment individual files and folders as well as an in-built defragmentation scheduler. As an added bonus, excessive Software – the guys behind the popular Power Defragmenter interface – have released a shell extension called Enhanced Defraggler Shell which allows Defraggler to be run directly from the Windows Explorer context menu.

Another major option in the playing field of free disk defragmenters is Ultra Defrag. Dubbed the "Open Source" defragmenter, it is a highly capable disk defragmenter that has been on the field for a very long time. It is currently in its fifth release. I found the features to be laid out very well, and the defragmentation speed was above average. This being said, the program's vista support is troublesome. Granted, there are guides to getting the program to running on vista, but for a program not to have native support for vista is a bit too much for me. I will continue to keep the program installed on my XP machine, as it is a good piece of software; however in my opinion, it is not worth the trouble in vista. In spite of this, here is the guide to installing the program on vista. 

To go along with MyDefrag, there is an excellent addon dubbed "MyDefragGUI." MyDefragGUI provides an enhanced graphical user interface for MyDefrag. It allows the user to access all the advanced features of MyDefrag in one easy console. If you use MyDefrag, then you know that instead of a GUI (graphical user interface) MyDefrag instead uses a series of start menue entries. For those of us who feel uncomfortable with that method, MyDefragGUI provides an excellent alternative.

For more options you may want to consider these:

Another company investing heavily in product development of late is Auslogics with its Auslogics Disk Defrag offering. The last few releases have seen the team add the ability to defragment single files and folders, schedule operations and update the program's algorithm for improved performance. We're excited by the prospect of what might come next.

If your needs for a glossy graphical interface are not a driving factor, Contig from SysInternals is a robust command line utility which defrags one file at a time and results in excellent performance gains. It's fast and safe, but the command line can turn off users. Fortunately, eXcessive software has built an excellent user interface for Contig, called Power Defragmenter that turns Contig into a really usable product. The latest release of Power Defragmenter offers a very nice “TripleMode” option which runs Contig in three passes; defragmenting any remaining fragmented files with each pass.

Enhanced Defraggler Shell for Defraggler from eXcessive Software.

Desktop Utilities with Diskeeper Lite V9 from Intel.

Instructions to remove nag screen from Diskeeper Lite.

There are many different audio and video formats out there, and most devices (such as the iPod) and programs (such as Windows Media Player) will only take a few specific formats. A DVD or WMV movie will not play on an iPod, for example, without being converted into an MP4 file.

Many commercial programs will do this conversion for you, but there are a few good ones that will do it for free. None of these programs are quite perfect. Some support more formats and devices, some are easier to use, and some are more stable. While some are better than others overall, which one is best for you will depend on your specific needs.

Note: I don't own DVDs, so I'm not qualified to review DVD rippers. If you want to review them, or have software suggestions, leave them here.

For most users, the best choice is Koyote Soft's Free Video Converter. It has a simple, easy-to-use, and clutter-free interface; great support for common devices (including multiple presets for many of them); and a reasonable amount of tweaks for custom jobs. It does not support custom presets, audio file conversions (for that, try X2X Free Audio Converter), or advanced tweaks; but otherwise is the perfect video converter.

For those perks, try FormatFactory. It supports dozens of devices (in addition to generic encoding) and does audio and picture conversions, making it the most complete converter in this review. The sidebar-based interface is a little garish, but responsive and stable. Although the sheer amount of devices supported will throw beginners for a moment, making (and saving) advanced tweaks and adding files is easy. If only it used less popup meus, and and didn't include a static banner ad for eBay, it would be perfect (and still is the best) converter for advanced users.

Somewhere in between is Pazera Video Converters Suite. It's really a package of several seperate device converters with a common launcher. Each converter has a simple text-based interface, good presets, and support for basic tweaking and custom profiles. It's a shame it doesn't handle advanced tweaks and odd output formats.

For power custom encoding jobs, MediaCoder is unmatched. The options in Advanced Mode are virtually unlimited, from start-stop times and odd codec combinations to custom croppings and channel mapping. However, these options are hard to navigate and can conflict with each other if you are not careful. MediaCoder includes several device presets and a setup wizard, but these are often incomplete and hard to find. This program is also more likely to lag, crash, or fail a job than the others. Still, its reliability and interface are rapidly improving, and its power is unparalleled. Regular users should try something else, but watch this space.

Recommended for niche use

SUPER: Great for simple but advanced custom jobs, and has some presets. Has an annoying interface
XMedia Recode: Dead-simple conversion for every device possible. Encoder settings not transparent
DVDVideoSoft Free: Pazera without custom tweaks; has neat tricks like Youtube downloading and video tweaking

Tested and not recommended

Actusoft Free Video Converter: Koyote Soft with  bad presets and other minor bugs
Auto Gordian Knot: Limited valid inputs and advanced options, DivX/AVI output only
Oxelon Media Converter: Too few possible tweaks for a program with no device support
Any Video Converter: FormatFactory with less options
Quick Media Converter: XMedia Recode with garish interface
Videora/Audioro: Slow, limited batch support, seperate programs for audio and video
WinFF: Pazera without the tweaking, Quick Media Converter without the eye candy
HandBrake: Cannot convert to WMV and H.264 files stably

All of the PDF writers in this review are programs that function by creating a pseudo printer on your system.  When you want to create a PDF document from pretty much any application you just choose to print it to the PDF printer and it creates a PDF document.  The thing that distinguishes one product from another is the number of options and flexibility available.  The one problem with this approach is that you need to have a program that will open the file on your system.  If someone sends you a file created with a program you do not have and you can't open the file then you can't print it and if you can't print it then you can't convert it to a pdf using a pseudo printer technique.  The two online products do not suffer from this problem but are limited only by the file formats recognized by the online vendor.

After eliminating those PDF Writers suggested by readers that were not free, were limited time trials, and basically adware (the product was free but forced the user to endure various ads as a punishment for using it), there were only six candidates left.  These were (alphabetically) Bullzip PDF Writer, CutePDF, doPDF, PDFCreator, PrimoPDF, and TinyPDF.  Which one of these is best?  That really depends on the options you need.

While I have recommended PDFCreator in the past, I have now moved to either PDFill Writer and/or Bullzip PDF Printer as my personal favorite(s).  Both have more of the options I need and has worked flawless for me. A problem with Bullzip is that the pdf file created may not be searchable. While it created a searchable pdf from word processing programs it did not from other programs like Excel. All the other candidates produced a searchable document from Excel and other non-word-processing software.  Please note that both of the recommended writers, and especially PDFill Writer, have enough options that they can be confusing to one who only wishes to create a simple PDF file.  Both PDF Creator and Cute PDF Writer will easily suffice for most users.

Key features of Bullzip PDF Printer include:
The ability to password protect your pdf files (only PrimoPDF and PDFCreator also had this ability)
The ability use either 40 or 128 bit encryption on the file (only PDFCreator also had this ability)
The ability to add a watermark (PDF Creator had a limited ability to add watermarks)
The ability to append or prepend files (PrimoPDF and PDFCreator also had this ability)
The ability to choose different levels of output quality (All but CutePDF and TinyPDF had this ability)
The ability to add/change metadata (PrimoPDF and PDFCreator also had this ability)

PDFCreator in its latest version is still my second (of three) choices and has all the features of Bullzip with the exception of a 64 bit version and more limited watermark abilities.  The help files are available only in English, French and German.  However it does have one unique feature among these products.  It comes with both a standalone install and a server install.  In a company setting this gives you the ability to install the printer driver on a server and make it available to all the workstations on the network without doing an install on each one of them.  This may make it a preferred choice in business situations if you don't need the other options that products like Bullzip offer.  Version 0.9.8 of PDF Creator did a great job printing a web page to pdf.

Among the very basic pdf Writers is CutePDF.  This provides only the most minimal functions and creates the pdf file with no options for password, encryption, metadata, or most other optional functions.  On the other hand, it is among the smallest of the downloads. doPDF is comparable to TinyPDF in terms of features.  It provides a minimal set but does have the ability to choose different levels of output quality which the other two do not.  I can see no reason not to prefer it over the other two unless you often print graphical documents to pdf.  

The most commonly asked question by readers has been about the size of the output file.  Using a large test file without graphics doPDF created the smallest files at 1.4 megs, CutePDF, and PDFCreator came in at 1.8 megs, and Bullzip came in at 1.9 megabytes.  While CutePDF, PDFCreator and Bullzip were larger they were also set at 600 dpi while the other two did not have the ability to change output and appeared to be 300dpi.   This was not a sufficient difference in output file size to make it an important factor for deciding on one over the other.  However, when a substantial amount of graphics were included doPDF produced a much larger file than the others.  CutePDF came in at 3.5 megs (at 300dpi), PrimoPDF and Bullzip both came in at 7.8 megs (at 600dpi) and doPDF came in at a whopping 13.3 megs (at 600dpi).  PDFCreator failed to correctly render the page and created failure errors each time it was tried.  

Primo pdf was removed from the list of best software because after downloading the newest version on June 5 from their website I found it totally unacceptable.  The product still does everything it did before but there is a lag of several seconds from the time I selected the printer until the screen with the Primo interface opened.  I even wondered if my computer was hung and was starting to look for the application to stop the process when it finally came up.  With no features that are not also found in Bullzip, I decided to delete it from the recommended list.  I should note that on my fastest computer it worked reasonably well but still much slower than all other products.

Although PrimoPDF was removed from the recommendations of best pdf Writer it does have a free online version at http://online.primopdf.com/ that allows you to upload a file and receive it back as a PDF via email.  If you need a pdf conversion only on rare occassion or you are on a computer that does not allow you to install software, or you don't have a program that can read the file, then this is a reasonable option.  Of course there is no opportunity to add passwords, encrypt, or add any of the other features you may need.  It is just a straight pdf file.

The most requested missing feature in all of these products is the ability to delete or reorder pages.  Sorry but you have to go to a paid product to get these features as none of them provide it in the free version.

HP also offers a free online service called CloudPrint.  It is designed to give you the ability to print from a cell phone or PDA.  If you check your email from a cell phone and need to print an attachment you can just send it to this service, which will convert it to a PDF file and send a SMS message to your cell phone with a reference ID.  When you get to a computer with an Internet interface you can login to the CloudPrint service and print the document.  It will also convert and print pictures taken with your cell phone.  While I don't see a need for this service personally, some swear by it, especially those who are constantly on the road seeing clients or between multiple offices.  This was not considered as one of the best PDF Writers only because it does not produce a file that you can save and keep as a PDF on your local drive.  It converts to PDF on the web server and allows you to print it from there.  On the other hand, it does allow you to print documents without having the original program that produced the file.  

If you select a PDF Writer that you like but it does not have some of the features you need you might consider a couple of products that offer the ability to add functions after creating the file.  pdfExchange Viewer is a fast viewer for PDF files that also allows the reader to add annotations to the file.  It can then be saved and printed either with or without the annotations.  PDFTK Builder allows you to add passwords and limit the ability of the reader to print, annotate, copy portions or otherwise use the pdf file other than reading it.  However, it does not have the ability to add encryption.  And lastly, JPDF Tweak allows the addition of watermarks, passwords, and encryption as well as limiting the ability to print or copy the file.  These all work on a pdf file that has already been created and are not used to create one.  Since those are beyond the limited scope of this article I have not included their information in this review, but they are easy enough to find with a web search.

You have no doubt invested time, trouble and possibly money, in your "must have" software. This investment is largely protected when you move to Windows 7 / Vista 64 and, if not, there are many excellent freeware alternatives. (In addition, Windows 7 / Vista 64 continue the tradition of offering
32 bit compatibility mode.)

Here are the top freeware picks for Windows 7 / Vista 64 in their various sections.  Where a native 64 bit application is currently unavailable, a suitable 32 bit alternative is provided.

BROWSER

Although Windows 7 / Vista 64 include both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Internet Explorer, version 8 in the case of Windows 7, many prefer more secure products. The 32 bit versions of Firefox, Google Chrome,and Opera all work without a hitch under both operating systems.

Apart from 64 bit Internet Explorer, the only other 64 bit browser currently available, and still under development,  is Firefox. Various preview versions can be found here.  I've found version 3.5.3 to be as stable as the 32 bit version. This version will import all of your bookmarks and history from 32 bit Firefox 3.0.14 or 3.5.3.  All currently installed addons are checked for compatibility when 64 bit Firefox is started, and those that are known to work are loaded automatically.

Active development is starting but these applications are not yet ready for daily use:

1. To support Java, a 64 bit browser requires a 64 bit version of the Java Runtime Environment. There is a suitable version of JRE for Windows 7 / Vista 64, but no major Web site actually supports this combination of software.
    
2. Adobe has yet to release a 64 bit version of their Flash Player, and the 32 bit version cannot be used in conjunction with a 64 bit browser under Windows 7 / Vista 64. Adobe have only committed to releasing a 64 bit version of the player at some point after the release of Flash Player version 10.
    
3. Some sites may simply refuse to allow access to a 64 bit browser.
    
4. Common addons for Firefox that interact with external 32 bit applications such as Roboform are not compatible with the 64 bit version of the browser.

If you find these restrictions unacceptable, stick with a 32 bit browser. See:

Best Free Web Browser

EMAIL CLIENT

Currently, the only released 64 bit email client is Windows Mail, included with Vista 64. Windows 7 does not include an email client.

There is a development project for 64 bit Thunderbird 3, the latest build, 3.0 beta 2, codenamed Shredder, is available here. Unfortunately, moving from your existing email client to 64 bit Thunderbird 3 can be quite a challenge. Users moving from Thunderbird 2 under Windows 7 / Vista 64 will need to use two third party freeware products, MozBackup and MailStore Home. Migration from Outlook is relatively simple under Vista 64 using the Thunderbird 3 import function. This approach doesn't work under Windows 7 due to changes in the registration of MAPI entries which no one appears to want to acknowledge or address.

Thunderbird 2 users who are considering the switch should be aware that the popular Lightning addon is not supported.

For the time being I would recommend that you stick with a 32 bit email client. For details refer to our review:

Best Free Email Client

FTP CLIENT

Following a comment from a reader I have been searching for free 64 bit FTP clients. So far, I have only managed to find one, Null FTP from Vision Works.

The free version of Null FTP, a cut down version of the paid product, has the following limitations:

• Number of concurrent transfers is limited to three.
• Number of FTP servers defined for quick connection is limited to three.
• Maximum TCP buffer size is limited to 128kB

Whether or not you can live with the first two limitations depends largely on how much you rely on FTP in your day to day activities. The third restriction has no impact on the speed of Internet or local network FTP transfers so I am surprised that they even bother to mention it.

In use, Null FTP has the typical local and remote files panes which support drag and drop, and status and log windows which provide details of the current connections and file transfers.

Overall, the product fails to match the top 32 bit selections in our review Best Free FTP Client. Unless you feel that a 64 bit FTP client is essential I suggest that you look there for the solution best suited to your needs.

FIREWALL

Remember that you should never run two or more firewall products side-by-side.  If you plan to switch to one of the products below, ensure that you disable Windows Firewall and any other firewall you have installed first.

If all you need is a simple interface to the built-in Windows firewall, and aren't too fussy about appearance or features, the free version of Vista Firewall Control is perhaps the answer. Be warned that access has to be defined for each application using one of four modes; out only, in only, enable all, or disable all. I suspect for many this will not offer a fine enough degree of control.

If you are looking for a free firewall with extra peace of mind in the form of a Host-Based Intrusion Pevention System (HIPS - see our article HIPS Explained for further information), Comodo Internet Security (CIS), is an excellent choice. CIS can be rather intrusive at first, but things do settle down as the program learns more about the system. It's necessary to change mode when installing new software and when dealing with reports, but this is a small price to pay since CIS includes one of the most effective firewalls on the market, free.  Full instructions are available in the "Miscellaneous" tab, or from the Comodo website.

When installing CIS, deselect the Install Antivirus option if you already have a suitable antivirus solution installed.  If you are using an old version of the CFP or CIS you should upgrade to the latest version as this will increase stability and reduce memory footprint. Windows 7 users should ensure they install version 3.9.x or later.

ANTIVIRUS

With its ease of use, fast scanning, and excellent detection rates, my first choice is Avira Antivir Personal Edition.   Although it lacks an email scanning feature, it compensates by the speed in which the Real-time protection leaps to your defence when any threats, including infected email attachments, are detected. As of version 9, Avira protects against Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Rootkits, Dialers, Spyware and Adware. I have no information, as yet, regarding the effectiveness of the anti-spyware and anti-adware components added in version 9.

Version 9 of Avira also adds the facility to review suspect items at the end of a scan, rather than dealing with each item when detected. This leaves the user free to run a scan unattended at any time and simply deal with the results when appropriate.

My main criticism is the large advert for the paid version which accompanies the updates, but it only takes a click to make it go away.  You also need to periodically reregister.

If you need an antivirus with extra features, such as email scanning and antispyware, Avast 4 may be the answer. The detection rates are good and scanning speed has been greatly improved in recent releases. Unfortunately, the default appearance isn't to everyone's liking although Avast does support alternative skins.

Many of the protection mechanisms used by Avast rely on interactive Windows services. Support in Windows 7 / Vista 64 for interactive services is intended for use by legacy applications. This places restrictions on the information that can be sent to the user.

Both Avira and Avast are hybrid 64 bit applications. Only the low level kernel mode drivers that interface with operating system are written in 64 bit code.

You can have more than one AV product installed, but only one should be enabled for real-time scanning. The same applies to email scanning.

If you are interested in alternatives to Avira and Avast, such as AVG Free or a-squared Free, then refer to our review:

Best Free Antivirus Software

ANTISPYWARE

There are some very good  on-demand  scanners  which don't  conflict with real-time protection.  Perhaps the best of these is SUPERAntiSpyware (SAS). Only available as a 32 bit application, it  can still detect malware that other products miss, remove rogue applications, and also repair some malware damage.

If you check the Windows event log, don't be concerned by entries relating to SASDIFSV.SYS and SASKUTIL.SYS following a reboot.  These are 32 bit device drivers used by the full version of SAS and do not affect operation of the free version.

The 64 bit version of SAS is currently undergoing beta testing. It is unclear if there will be a free version.

Malwarebytes is also worth considering because of its fast scanning and general ease of use. Effective at detecting and removing trojans, results are less impressive for other types of malware.

The newly released Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition represents a major overhaul.  Heuristic detection and integrated real-time protection have been added, although the latter is only for rogue processes in the free version. Resource efficiency has been targeted, particularly processor and memory usage, scanning speed has been improved, and a more extensive detection database is now used.  Ad-Aware AE is certainly more resource efficient than previous versions and scanning times compare favourably with SuperAntiSpyware when tested on a system with over 200 Gb of software and data.

Real-time protection is implemented by a combination of an interactive Windows service and a 64 bit kernel mode device driver making Ad-Aware AE a hybrid 32/64 bit application. Support in Windows 7 / Vista 64 for interactive services is intended for use by legacy applications. This places restrictions on the information that can be sent to the user.

As to real world effectiveness, Ad-Aware continues to maintain a reasonable detection rate but many threats go undetected.

For full details of the testing carried out on these and other products in this category refer to our review:

Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover

SYSTEM TOOLS

Although Windows 7 / Vista 64 have their own housekeeping tools for defragmenting the hard disk, removing junk files and various other tasks, there are 3rd party alternatives which perform better and offer additional features.  There are few 64 bit tools but the ones available, added to the 32 bit versions that work under Windows 7 / Vista 64, are very good at what they do.

Before you dig too deeply into this section you might want to read the great article:

"How to make Vista run faster"

The information contained in the article applies equally well to Windows 7.

ALL IN ONE

If you prefer to use  a single tool for the upkeep of your PC, you need look no further than the latest version of the excellent Glary Utilities. As this is a 32 bit program that runs in a 64 bit environment, you will notice that one or two of the modules are not fully working, the Uninstall Manager for example, doesn't recognise 64 bit applications, and therefore cannot uninstall them. This is a step in the right direction though, and perhaps there is a native 64 bit version of Glary Utilities on the horizon.

DISK DEFRAGMENTER

JKDefrag, available as a native 64 bit application, finds many fragmented files, even if used immediately after the Windows defragmentation tool.  After defragmenting files it optimizes file placement and, being Volume Shadow Copy aware, doesn’t destroy your valuable Restore Points. JKDefrag can be run on demand from the desktop or USB stick. There are also command line and screen saver versions.

MyDefrag, by the author of JKDefrag, available in 32 and 64 bit versions, is novel in that it is a merely a defragmentation and file placement engine. The actions carried out by my MyDefrag are script driven, with a number of useful example scripts being included in the installation. The simple scripting language is well documented allowing scripts to be developed to suit any defragmentation/optimisation requirement. The scripting language includes a command that allows the files identified in the Windows Prefetch cache to be optimised.

A script can be executed by double clicking on it in Explorer, passing it as a parameter to MyDefrag invoked via a shortcut or the appropriate task scheduler. MyDefrag requires administrator privilege and, if running from the Task Scheduler under Windows 7 or Vista, it is recommended that the SYSTEM account is used.

If the MyDefrag GUI interface is set to be visible during script execution, the default, the rather poor disk map, familiar to JK Defrag users, is displayed. You can switch from this to a text based statistics/progress view, but presentation is equally unimpressive.

All physical directory/file operations carried out by MyDefrag use the Windows Defragmentation API and can therefore be considered safe. The process can be interrupted at any time without risk of data loss or corruption.

For those with unusual defragmentation and/or optimisation requirements MyDefrag offers unparalleled flexibility. Readers who merely want to defragment their disk(s) on a regularly basis should use one of the standard scripts provided with MyDefrag, I use FastOptimize, to achieve excellent results. MyDefrag definitely deserves to replace JKDefrag as Gizmo's Top Pick.

Readers who dislike the minimal JK Defrag/MyDefrag GUI should consider 32 bit products such as IOBit Smart Defrag and Defraggler, covered in our review:

Best Free Disk De-fragmenter

Keep in mind that 32 bit disk defragmentation tools will incur a performance hit by having to use the WOW64 (32 bit compatibility mode) interface.

If you decide to use a third party disk defragmenter, don't be tempted to disable the built in Windows 7 / Vista 64 disk defragmenter. If you do, you will greatly reduce the effectiveness of ReadyBoot (sic), the mechanism that monitors files accessed during the last 5 boots and creates a boot plan to reduce startup time. This boot plan is passed to the Windows disk defragmenter to allow the placement of files used during the boot process to be optimized.

DISK CLEANER

CCleaner, recently rewritten in c++ , scans for both junk files and registry errors. The registry cleaning component only handles that part of the registry visible to 32 bit applications and is quite mild. Additional features include cookie management, program removal, and secure file erasing. Existing users who upgrade will notice a significant reduction in scanning times.  

This is one of the first tools I recommend people install on a Windows PC, and regular use will go a long way to preventing the hard drive from becoming bogged down with unwanted junk.

CCleaner has never dealt with purging Windows Restore Points, a major source of accumulated junk. The Disk Cleanup tool available in 32 bit Windows 7 / Vista allows you to do this but, under Windows 7 / Vista 64, although the option to perform this task still exists, it does not work correctly.  My thanks go to Kristan Kenny for providing the solution to this problem.

If you want to correct the Disk Cleanup shortcut in the Start menu, follow these steps:
 

1. Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, and then click on System Tools.
2. Right click on "Disk Cleanup" and from the context menu click on "Properties."
3. Change the Target to %SystemRoot%\system32\cleanmgr.exe.
4. Click on OK.  If a UAC prompt appears, click on Continue or provide the appropriate credentials.

If you've automated Disk Cleanup, the correct path to use in your script is:

%WINDIR%\sysnative\cleanmgr.exe

If you launch Disk Cleanup from another location in Windows, for instance by clicking the “Disk Cleanup” button in the properties window of a drive, the correct 64 bit version of Disk Cleanup is launched.

REGISTRY CLEANER

I am not a fan of Registry cleaners.  They have a nasty habit of removing things that are vital to the correct operation of commercial software. 

That aside, even finding a specific Registry Cleaner free of charge for Windows 7 / Vista 64 is no easy task .  People on many forums recommend Wise Registry Cleaner. It only handles that part of the registry visible to 32 bit applications, but is the most satisfactory product I have come across.

Firstly, it allows you to backup the Registry before you start and there is also a restore option.  Secondly, by default, it doesn't check Class Security Identifiers (CLSIDs) or other areas where most Registry tricks are played, although these can be included if required. Finally it divides redundant/invalid entries into two groups, 1) those you can remove safely, and 2) the rest which require closer examination before removing. I think it is fair to say that you are reasonably safe removing the entries in the first group although I would caution against removing those in the second group unless you have a good understanding of the Registry and how applications use it.

REGISTRY DEFRAGMENTER

While a PC is in use there is a constant stream of data being added to and removed from the registry and over time this can cause the registry to become fragmented, there is also the problem of registry cleaners and program uninstalls producing gaps in the registry file.   When this occurs, it does nothing to enhance the performance or reliability of the system, therefore, the occasional use of a registry defragmenter / optimiser is seen by some as a necessary part of the maintenance regime.

Free Registry Defrag is a fast,  reliable and free tool which is capable of compacting and defragmenting the registry and from version 2.4 onwards includes both 32 and 64 bit versions.  If used when the level of fragmentation is in excess of 10% the results are noticeable.  Be aware though that the software does not include a Registry backup option so exercise caution and create a Restore Point before using.

SYSINTERNALS SUITE

No list of system tools would be complete without mentioning the excellent SysInternals Suite which is used to trouble shoot PCs worldwide. Although SysInternals is now part of Microsoft, the tools remain free and are regularly updated.

Most of the SysInternals tools work correctly under Windows 7 / Vista 64. In particular, the three most widely used tools, Process Explorer, Process Monitor and Autoruns, extract and run 64 bit code. At present, Autologon doesn't work, but a suitable alternative can be found here.

If you are looking for a utility that will create shortcuts to the most commonly used SysInternals tools, check out SysInternals Toolbox in our review :

Best Free Vista Tweaks.

SYSTEM INFORMATION UTILITY

The 32 bit SIW utility still manages to display a host of detailed information relating to your PC hardware, operating system, installed programs, processes, services, serial numbers (CD keys), users, open files, system uptime, network, network shares, as well as real-time monitors for CPU, memory, page file usage and network traffic when running under Windows 7 / Vista 64. It also displays currently active network connections, passwords hidden behind asterisks, installed codecs, and more. 

SIW doesn't require installation so it can be run from a USB flash drive without problem.

For a full guide to System Information Utilities:

Best Free System Information Utility.

SYSTEM TOOLS/UTILITIES INCLUDED IN WINDOWS 7

The Windows 7 Resource Monitor provides access to a host of information about what is using your precious system resources. Resource usage information is available for the CPU(s), memory, disk and network. The level of detail that can be viewed means Resource Monitor is more closely related to the Process Explorer/Process Monitor tools from SysInternals than it is Task Manager. Unlike Process Explorer/Process Monitor, you don't have to be overwhelmed by detail, since you can view information in a way that suits you.

To try out Resource Monitor, click on Start, type resource monitor into the search box, and then click on the Resource Monitor entry that appears under Programs.

For an in depth look at Resource Monitor refer to our article:

Windows 7 Resource Monitor: New & Improved

My favourite new feature in Windows 7 is the Problem Steps Recorder.

If you've ever tried to help a friend or family member over the phone, or via email, with a PC problem I'm sure you know how difficult and frustrating it can be. With the best will in the world things tend to get lost in translation. They miss out a piece of information relating to the problem, or you do regarding the solution. PSR overcomes this problem by allowing the steps needed to reproduce a problem, or to implement a fix, to be recorded and saved to a file.

To start PSR, click on Start, type psr.exe into the search box, and then either click on the psr.exe entry that appears under Programs, or right click and choose Run as a administrator. Note you need to choose Run as administrator if any of the screens you wish to capture are running with administrator privilege.

Once loaded you simply click on the red circular Start Record button to start capturing user activity. Comments can be added during the capture and to finish the session you simply click on the Stop Record button. Once recording has stopped you will be prompted to enter a filename and the whole session will be saved to a ZIP file. The maximum number of screen shots that can be recorded by default is 25. To change this, click on the downward arrow at the right hand end of the PSR dialog box and choose Settings.

The ZIP contains a MHT, mime encoded HTML, format document that includes the screen shots, any comments that were added, and a text based description of the actions that were carried out. This can be opened and edited in any version of Word from 2002 upwards. Alternatively, the file can be viewed using the free Word Viewer, Internet Explorer version 5 or higher,  Firefox with the UnMHT extension installed and Opera version 9.0 or higher.

PSR is not a ground breaking application, but it will help me to assist others much more quickly and efficiently.

TWEAKING TOOLS

The majority of tools in this category are covered in: Best Free Vista Tweaks which includes details of compatibility with Vista 64. With the exception of Vista Logon Studio all the applications that work under Vista 64 will also work under Windows 7. An alternative to Vista Logon Studio for Windows 7 users is given below.

Iconoid, a 64 bit port of SillySot's application, allows you to change the colour of text associated with your desktop icons. You can also save and restore the position of desktop icons and, optionally, hide and restore icons by clicking on the desktop.

In order to use Iconoid to change the colour of text you must first turn off drop shadows for icon text.  This must be done via Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, and then click on the Settings button under Performance.  Right clicking on Computer, and then choosing Properties, will only change settings until you logoff or the PC is rebooted.

Tweak.com's Logon Changer,  available only as a 32 bit application, allows you select any JPG image for the Windows 7 logon screen. To change the image used, simply click on Change Logon Screen. The application will prompt for the location and name of the new background image and then install it.

Windows 7 imposes a 256 Kb limit on the size of the JPEG image that can be used for the logon screen. If your image is larger than this, Logon Changer will give you the option to automatically resize and/or compress the image. Note that the original image is left untouched. 

DATA/FILE/FOLDER TOOLS

DATA RECOVERY / UNDELETE

No matter how careful we try to be, there's a chance that an important file, picture, track etc will get deleted by accident. Hours of work and valuable photos can all be lost with a click of the mouse, or by selecting the wrong option on a digital camera.

There aren't many data recovery apps that support Windows 7 / Vista 64, but the good news is that the 32 bit application Recuva, from the makers of CCleaner, is one that does.

Recuva is simple to use, effective, and can be used to recover lost items from the following:

• FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 , NTFS + EFS file systems
• Removable media (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, Digital cameras, Floppy disks, Jaz Disks, Sony Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards, Smart Media Cards, Secure Digital Cards, etc.)
• External ZIP drives , Firewire and USB Hard drives
• iPods
• Emails deleted from Thunderbird

  
  

FILE ARCHIVER/ZIP UTILITY

7-Zip and PeaZip are available as native 64 bit applications and contain all of the functionality of their 32 bit counterparts. Readers interested in a comparison of these products should refer to our review:

Best Free File Archiver/Zip Utility

FOLDER SYNCHRONIZATION UTILITY

Microsoft's SyncToy, available as a native 64 bit application, can copy, move, rename, and delete files between any number of folders and even computers. Operations are carried out on local and/or remote pre-defined folder pairs. Remote folders can be specified by drive letter or UNC name. You define and name these pairs, files can be included or excluded based on wildcards and/or file attributes, and then when you want to perform a task, you recall one of these pairs and carry out the operation. Syncing can be in either direction and covers all options from complete sync to updating newer files only. SyncToy can also keep track of files you rename and rename those in the sync destination.  Overwritten files in the destination can be saved in the recycle bin, in case you need the older version. SyncToy also allows you to preview a sync, that is, view what would happen if the sync operation was executed. This ensures the operation will do exactly what you want before you use it.

In addition to the easy to use GUI, SyncToy can also be run from the command line to sync a chosen folder pair or, all folder pairs.

SyncToy is a versatile utility that will satisfy all but the most demanding of users. It also runs very quickly despite being based on the .NET framework. The only major things it lacks are the ability to select files from a folder via a standard tree view, direct support for ftp, and a portable version.

SECURE ERASE UTILITY

The 64 bit version of Eraser will securely overwrite selected files and folders, or even whole disks (it works with any drive, including IDE, SCSI, RAID, and CD-RWs). It addition to handling normal data areas, Eraser can also wipe data in the paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk space, and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk.  It can handle FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions.  Erasing files with a high level of security, involving user selected data patterns and multiple passes, will always be a time consuming task, and 100% security cannot be guaranteed. However, Eraser makes the task about as easy as it can be, at a security level that exceeds  most conceivable requirements.

If Eraser goes beyond what you need, then refer to our review Best Free Secure Erase Utility for details of simpler, 32 bit alternatives, that work quite happily under Windows 7 / Vista 64.

DESKTOP/OFFICE TOOLS

DIGITAL IMAGE EDITOR

This is not a field in which I can claim to have any expertise. I have tested the products identified to confirm that they work under Windows 7 / Vista 64. Readers who are interested in comparing product features should refer to our review:

Best Free Digital Image Editor

Paint.Net is available as a native 64 bit application. In addition to the products built in features there are a huge number of user contributed plugins that add further capabilities. Despite requiring version 2 or higher of the .NET Framework, 3.5 SP1 is recommended, Paint.NET isn't too resource intensive and during testing I didn't notice slow downs at any point.

An experimental 64 bit version of The GIMP is available although the installation routine stresses the fact that this version isn't suitable for day to day work.

DIGITAL IMAGE VIEWER

A reader has brought to my attention FastPictureViewer, a native 64 bit application for viewing JPEG images.This claims to be (and probably is) the fastest viewer ever. It uses hardware to speed things up and requires a lot of system resources and graphic capabilities. It has a nice interface as well. Anyway, the program offers no other functions and is limited to just viewing.

Open Office covers just about all the bases, everything from a document writer to databases and spreadsheets,  it handles files produced with Excel. Word and Powerpoint,  and also there are numerous extensions available.  All in all this is one of the best examples of freeware to be found!

For those of you who need to be able to handle Office 2007 documents I suggest that you check out How do I open Microsoft Office 2007 files?

PDF READER

Thanks go to one of our readers for bringing PDFXCHANGE Viewer to my attention. PDFXCHANGE Viewer is available as a combined 32/64 bit download containing the full product and 32 bit shell extensions, or as a 32 bit only portable version. The free version of PDFXCHANGE, which simply has the features of the Pro version disabled, has enough capabilities to satisfy all but the most demanding of users. The toolbars can be customised to suit user taste, even the performance of the application, maximum memory usage, number of threads and so on can be tuned.

In use, the 64 bit version is quick and memory usage is on a par with Adobe Reader 9. Image quality, although not quite as good as Adobe's product, is still excellent. In fact, for documents that originally contained rasterised images, reproduction is actually far better.

The portable 32 bit version is worthy of mention. It naturally lacks some features available in the full product but still produces high quality images making it ideal for a personal PC toolkit.

If you want a feature rich 64 bit PDF viewer and are not prepared to wait for Adobe to play catch up, then I recommend you take a look at this product.

PDF WRITER

BullZip, CuteWriter and doPDF all have 64 bit versions although BullZip and CuteWriter rely on the 32 bit version of GhostScript Lite.

I have successfully tested all of these applications under Windows 7 / Vista 64 and suggest that interested readers refer to our review :

Best Free PDF Writer

to assist them in choosing the best product for their needs.

Articles

• 32 bit and 64 bit explained
• HIPS Explained
• How to make Vista run faster
• How Windows 7 / Vista 64 Support 32 bit Applications
• Windows 7 Resource Monitor: New & Improved

Reviews

• Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover
• Best Free Antivirus Software
• Best Free Digital Image Editor
• Best Free Digital Image Viewer
• Best Free Disk De-fragmenter
• Best Free Email Client
• Best Free File Archiver/Zip Utility
• Best Free FTP Client
• Best Free PDF Writer
• Best Free Secure Erase Utility
• Best Free System Information Utility
• Best Free Vista Tweaks
• Best Free Web Browser