The 50 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

There are a lot of great freeware programs out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives.

This is my personal selection of the best of the best.  I use every single product in this list and find each to be a gem.  Of course other folks may differ but, hey, this is MY selection ;>)

The Best Freeware List

Best Free Anti-Virus Software
I normally recommend the Norton Anti-virus suite but I'm fully aware that some folks simply can't afford to buy it.  If you fall into this category then you should check out AVG Antivirus 6.0 Free Edition. This product has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and now offers very impressive protection capabilities. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no technical support. Even so, it's an impressive package and a offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.(5MB)
http://www.grisoft.com/

Best Free Browser Accelerator
There are dozens of products that claim to speed up your surfing
but most have little effect. NaviScope is different - it actually works! Not only does it speed up your surfing it also offers optional ad, pop-up, cookie and JavaScript blocking, an extensive set of diagnostic tools and more bells and whistles  than you can imagine. My only beef is that the tool bar is very
obtrusive so once you set up NaviScope, you should select the option to turn off the toolbar.  If you need it, you can always bring it up again though the taskbar icon. (614KB)
http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/new/internet/internet_tools/nscope.exe

Best Free File Manager
Windows Explorer is fine for simple file management activities but when you have some serious work to do, you need a two pane file manager. I use Directory Opus which is excellent but costs $59.  Recently I discovered 2X Explorer.  It offers most of the functionality of Directory Opus and is totally free. As a bonus, its user interface is very similar to Windows Explorer, so most users will find this tool easy to learn and use.(392KB)
http://netez.com/2xExplorer/

Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service
There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services, JAP, is totally free and it's level of secrecy is better than many commercial systems. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers. You'll also need to change your browser settings to work through a proxy.
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html

Best Free Software Suite
GNUWin II is a free software compilation for Windows. This huge suite features dozens of programs including free alternatives to many expensive commercial products.  There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, Gzip for WinZIP are dozens more.   Taken collectively this suite provides more than enough software to completely set up a PC without spending a cent on applications or utilities.  The suite is available or CD or you download the
CD image and cut your own.
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/en/index.html

Best Free Notepad Replacement
There are lots of text editors and Notepad replacements. Some of these aspire to be programming editors while others try to be word processors.  What I love about EditPad is that, unlike the others, it concentrates on simply being a better plain text editor and it succeeds brilliantly.  It has a Notepad like interface combined with tabbed document windows and the ability to open as many documents as you like with no file size limitations. I use it every day for tasks as diverse as writing Support Alert Newsletter to examining my web log files. Some of the latter can be up to 100MB, yet EditPad handles these huge files with ease.  (849KB). http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html

Best Free Hotkey Utility
Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else.  Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. (0.91KB)
http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html

Best Free Registry Cleaner
To keep the registries on my PCs in top running order I use Fix-It utilities and Norton Utilities as well.  Both of these are commercial products but I must admit that ToniArts Easy Cleaner performs almost as well and is totally free. As a bonus, it will also detect duplicate files and help you clean up temp files to make more disk space.
 http://www.toniarts.com/ecleane.htm

The Best Bookmark Cleaner
AM-DeadLink scans your bookmark file for dead links or duplicate links. When I tried it on my huge favorites file I discovered 17% of my links were dead. I've now got a much leaner set of favorites and the comfort of knowing that the links actually work.
http://aignes.com/press/deadlink140.htm

Best Free Route Tracer
3D Traceroute  graphically displays  Internet route information. You can use it for technical tasks such as diagnosing slow connections or for general purpose snooping like determining the location and owner of a web site or tracing spammers. (996KB)
http://www.hlembke.de/prod/3dtraceroute/

The Best Free Screen Capture Utility
I've used over half a dozen screen-capture utilities and none of them has really satisfied. Until now.  Gadwin screen capture does exactly what I want in the way I want. Further, it avoids the trap of providing lots of useless and confusing features. It's the little things that count like making the hot key PrtSc so I don't have to remember it, and automatically sequentially naming the output files for multiple screen shots. Gadwin will stay on my PC permanently. (976KB)
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/?prnscr

The Best Free Search Bar
Dave’s Quick Search Bar is a free utility that gives you the same easy access to Google searches as Google's own search bar but wait, there’s more.  It also provides access to the excellent Teoma, FAST and other search engines. Because it resides in your task bar, it's accessible from any application. Comes with a host of other features such as dictionary/thesaurus access and even a calculator. If that's not enough for you, it's totally customizable. One cool product. (380KB)
http://www.dqsd.net/

Best Free Web Site Ripper
Whether you call it a web site explorer or offline browsing facilitator, this utility is really a web site ripper. It will speedily download non-password sites in whole or in part to your hard drive. There are many web rippers but WebReaper is amongst the best and yet it's free. (966kB)
http://www.webreaper.net/

Best Free DLL Cleaner
Over time most PCs become cluttered up with the unwanted remainders of long deleted programs. DLL Archive is a free utility that will scan your PC for DLLs that are no longer referenced. You can then archive the unwanted programs away or delete them entirely. Archived items can easily be restored to their original location if any problems arise. (227KB)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/dllarch.htm

Best Free File Cleaner
I've tried quite a few commercial products designed to clean unneeded temporary files off your hard disk but must say that the free utility "Empty Temp Folders" ranks with the best. It takes a few minutes to set up but after that, all you need do is press a button to recover many megabytes of disk space. (667KB)
http://www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/emptemp

Best Free Resource Meter
This is cute. TinyResMeter is an itsy-bitsy system monitor. Unlike many other monitors, it doesn't consume a lot of CPU utilization in order to tell you your CPU utilization. In addition to CPU usage you can optionally monitor cache, RAM, page file and swap file usage, running processes and threads, disk space utilization and a number of other parameters as well.
Also built-in, is a screen grabber that saves the current screen to disk when you press PrintScreen. How they fit all this into 96KB beats me.
http://pesoft.fr.st/

Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User
Mailwasher is for most folk, the easiest way of dealing with Spam.  It's a free email preview utility that allows you to check your email on your mail server before you download it to your PC. The advantage of this approach is that you can kill unwanted messages including spam, viruses and large attachments before they get anywhere near your computer. But Mailwasher does more. It automatically flags for you any messages containing viruses and possible spam which makes for quick and easy identification. It also will send a message back to the spam mail sender saying that their message could not be delivered. Hopefully this will encourage some spammers to take your name off their mailing list.  The free version only handles only one POP email account  but that's sufficient for most users.   ( 1.35MB)
http://www.mailwasher.net/

Best Free Spam Filter for Experienced Users
When it comes to effectiveness, POPFile beats the pants off every other spam filter I've tried. But this effectiveness takes a little time to develop. POPFile is a statistical filter so it has to be trained to recognize your spam from your normal mail.  It takes a week or so before it starts becoming accurate and best results may take a month or more.  POPFile works as a proxy mail server so that means that it can be used with any POP email client. Setup is reasonably straightforward for experienced users but beginners should stick with Mailwasher.
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/old_index.html

Best Free PopUp Stopper
The Proxomitron is not like your average popup stopper. It operates by filtering and transforming all your Web pages on the fly. As a result you can not only stop pop-ups but pop-unders, ads, flash animations, status bar scrollers and just about anything else. Besides, next time you are asked what pop-up stopper you use, you can answer; "why, I use The Proxomitron" and how cool is that. The first link below is to version 4.5, the last and final version of this superb utility. The following two links offer useful setup and usage tips. Note:  For Novice PC users I suggest you try the news Google tool bar rather than The Proxomitron. It's free as well and has  an excellent popup filter built in. It's not as flexible as as The Proxomitron,  but it requires no setup. As a bonus it also makes Google searches easier.
http://computercops.biz/files/ProxN45.exe
http://accs-net.com/smallfish/prox.htm
http://www.sankey.ws/proxomitron.html
http://www.sankey.ws/proxomitron.html

Best Free Download Accelerator
Star Downloader 1.32 is not only free of charge, it's free of ads, spyware and other undesirable extras packed into most free  download accelerators. On top of that, it is blindingly fast and  has a raft of features including automatic mirror site detection, automatic resumption of failed downloads, download  scheduling, anti-virus integration and more. If you are not yet using a download accelerator, go get this product and start counting the time you save. The faster your internet connection, the more you will gain. Users with slow modem connections will, unfortunately, benefit least. (1.3MB)
http://www.stardownloader.com/

Best Free Sticky Notes Utility
Some people hate these programs others swear they can't work effectively without them. I used to be in the first category but with so many things on my plate these days, I'm slowly being converted.  The function that I find really useful is the reminder that pops up at a designated time and date. Simple things like "put up the latest issue on the web site." Turbonote
is a freeware utility that provides me with just about every function I need. The same company sells an enhanced version but the free version (v3.9) will suit most folks, me included.
http://www.turbonote.com/

Best Free Secure Erase Utility
Eraser is a free, GNU license utility that will securely erase files, folders or even whole disks from any Windows or DOS PC. Eraser overwrites data area with selectable random data patterns and also wipes 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 handles FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions as well.  Erasing files with high security will always be a difficult and time consuming task and can never offer absolute 100% safety. However Eraser makes the task about as easy as it be, with a security level beyond most conceivable requirements. An impressive package. (2.6MB)
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Best Free Outlook Express Backup
This free utility allows you to do a full or selective backup of OE's critical files including mail folders, newsgroups, address book and identity settings. Simple, effective ... neat.  (2.1MB)
http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx

Best Free Process Viewer
PrcView displays detailed information about all running Windows processes including memory used, threads and DLL usage. For each process and DLL, full path and version information is also displayed. Individual processes can be killed or their priorities changed. It even allows you to automatically run a script to check if a process is running and kill it. All this is crammed into a tiny 100KB package.  Works for all versions of Windows.
http://www.teamcti.com/pview/prcview.htm

Best Free Inventory Tool
AIDA32 is arguably the best system inventorying tools I've used regardless of price.  It will document just about every aspect of your hardware and software configuration. Throw in the fact that it checks out networks, gives memory benchmarks and that it is totally free, and you end up with a product that should be in everyone's toolkit. Download from the link below but remember to download the documentation as well. Corporate users need to register - but there's still no charge.
http://www.aida32.hu/aida-features.php?bit=32          

Best Free Adware/Spyware Remover  Spybot Search and Destroy quickly hunt's down all those odious applications that are secretly bundled in with many "advertiser-supported" utilities. It also provides active protection against browser hijackers, auto-dialers and other surreptitiously downloaded scumware products.  Some folks don't care about revealing their surfing and consumption behavior to advertisers. Personally I am paranoid which is why I love S&D and run it regularly.  ( 2.5MB)  
http://spybot.safer-networking.de/

Best Free Search and Replace Utility
I've been a long time user of Funduc Software's excellent Search and Replace utility, now in version 4. However, I have to admit that after using HandyFile's free Find and Replace program, my loyalties are torn. Granted, it does pretty much the same thing, but it's faster as changes are made in memory rather than by writing to disk. This feature also provides a degree of safety. If you need to do text file replacements over multiple files, I suggest you give this tiny free utility a spin.(361KB)
http://www.silveragesoftware.com/handytools.html

Best Free Outliner
I'm not a great fan of outliners - my brain doesn't work that way. Some folks however, swear by them and if that includes you, then you should check out Keynote, an Open Source freeware program that has a dedicated band of followers.  Its major design attribute is its ease of use. Words like "natural" and "seamless" come close to the mark but really don't capture the essence of what is really a great design. What do you do with it? Well to quote the web site “KeyNote is used by screenwriters to draft screenplays, by medical doctors to keep patient databases, by developers to store source code snippets - and to everyone it serves as a place to put all the random pieces of information that have no particular structure of relationship to other data, and do not fit easily in task-specific applications such as word-processors, databases or spreadsheets.”  (1.7MB)
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html

Best Free Rename Utility
Lupas Rename 2000 is a small Windows utility that globally renames all the files in a directory and its subdirectories. It can convert names to upper/lower case, change the case of the first letter, add text, left crop,
right crop and just about anything else you can think of. And unlike DOS based utilities, it will work on hidden files as well. Add in a nice GUI interface, an undo feature, full preview of changes and the fact that it's free and you have a utility that should be in every toolkit.
http://www.geocities.com/lupas2000/zips/lupasrename.zip

Best Free Windows Driver Backup
WinDriversBackup is a nifty free utility that identifies all your Windows driver files and saves them to a nominated location. This utility is great for simplifying operating system reinstalls,  particularly for PCs whose exact hardware configuration is not fully known or documented. Works across a network as well. Recommended.
http://www.jermar.com/wdrvbck.htm

Best Free Digital Image Utility
Irfanview is a free multimedia viewer and editor that supports a huge range of file formats. Each new version seems to add more capabilities but to me, its most powerful features are its speed and its batch processing capability.  If you want to resize sets of digital images for the web or for transmission by email, Irfanview is the best free solution available.  It's also a mighty fine image viewer as well. I just can't believe something this good is free.
http://www.irfanview.com/

Best Free File Comparison Utility
WinMerge is a free Windows utility that compares two files and identifies the differences. The differences can then be merged from one file into the other. This is the sort of product that is ideal when you have several different versions of a file and are not sure of how they differ. The product is geared to text files so it won't be much use to you with Word Processing or other complex formatted documents  But for text reports or computer programs, WinMerge is ideal. (514KB)
http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/

Best Free Email Accessory
 As well as my normal POP email account, I have multiple Yahoo webmail accounts. Managing the latter used to be easy until Yahoo started charging to forward webmail to my POP account.  To overcome the problem, I now use a nifty free product called YahooPOPS!  that allows you to collect your Yahoo webmail from within your POP email client such as Outlook or Eudora. I use Outlook and must say YahooPOPS! works seamlessly from within the program.  I just press "Send/Receive" and collect all my email at the one time. One of those rare  programs where you offer a silent "thanks" to the developer every time you use it.   ( 3.7MB)  
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/

Best Free Outlook Accessory
I hate opening HTML email. Despite multiple layers of protection I just know that one day some cunning new exploit is going to get me.  That's why I'm so enthusiastic about PocketKnife Peek, a small free Outlook add-in that allows you to preview your HTML email as text.
http://www.xintercept.com/pkpeek.htm

The Best Tabbed Internet Explorer Variant
Tabbed IE variants seem to be proliferating wildly and with good reason. The one that I like most is a freeware product called MyIE2. It works as a small efficient shell that sits over IE. The advantage of this approach is that normal IE plug-ins like the Google toolbar work fine in all the tabbed windows. The longer I use MyIE2 the more I like it. In fact, when I go back to the normal IE, it feels painfully cumbersome.  Don't expect a lot of documentation but if you read the FAQ from the support forum (see below) you'll have no problems. There's no installation required as no registry changes are made so it can happily co-exist with IE. (0.56MB)
http://www.webattack.com/get/myiebrowser.shtml
http://www.overseasky.net/myie2/forum_new/forum_topics.asp?FID=12

BEST OF THE REST

These specialist free utilities don't fit into any particular product category but are great products that fill a real need:

Restore Missing Toolbars
Inexperienced PC users just always seem to be losing their Windows and Internet Explorer toolbars. I've never quite worked out exactly how they do it but they sure manage it somehow. Luckily, this free utility makes recovery a snack.
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/ToolbarRepair.Exe

Locate Required DLLs
This free utility can be a lifesaver. It identifies all the DLL  and OCX  support files required to operate any Windows 32 bit executable file.
http://linos-software.com:23/Depend.html

Free NFO Viewer
Many freeware files are distributed with descriptive NFO  and DIZ files as part of the distribution package. These are just plain text files so you can view them with Notepad or other text editor but often the formatting is lost.  Try  this tiny little viewer that's built for the job. It's free and once associated with the NFO and DIZ file types, works seamlessly, a true "install and forget" product.
http://www.damn.to/software/nfoviewer.html

Lock Down Your Icons
Sick of Windows moving your icons around on the desktop? Lock them down with this nifty free utility. (400KB)
http://www.sillysot.com/

Monitor Your User's Backup Needs
BackupWatcher is a free tool that allows LAN administrators to measure the backup requirements of network users.  It does this by monitoring the file churn rate on each PC since last backup. Full reporting facilities are provided that allow problem areas to be easily identified. Quite a neat way of reducing unnecessary backups and ensuring necessary ones are actually carried out. (2.57MB)
http://bw.rippletech.com/

Free Utility Kills Instant Messaging Viruses
If you use IRC or instant messaging then you should check out SOFTWIN, a company that provides a number of totally free anti-virus utilities than scan all data transfers associated with IM products.  All the utilities make use of the virus signature databases from the BitDefender Professional anti-virus product so signature file updating is simple. There are versions for MSN Messenger, NetMeeting, ICQ, mIRC, and Yahoo! Messenger.
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/instant_messaging.php

Photoshop Replacement for Nix
Oriens Enhancer is a graphics processing program similar in function to Photoshop and Paintshop. The big difference is that it's free, the others cost big bucks.  But don't think free means limited. On the contrary this product can read more than 40 file formats, has filters, textures and color effects to burn and can even handle layers. If that's not enough for you, let me say that on my PC it was both fast and stable. I'm giving this one Gizmo's JCBTIF certification. (Just Can't Believe This Is Free) (4.05MB)
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/26013

Free Utility Stops Browser Hijacking
There's a browser hijacking plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a loaded shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered or phantom bookmarks added to your favorites. This free monitor will let you know when something's trying to change your settings and pass control back to you. (394KB)
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/bhblaster.html

Hides Personal Files from the Boss
Camouflage is a free utility that will hide your personal or confidential files within another file. The neat thing is that the container file looks and works like a normal file of that format. So, by way of example, you could embed a secret message in a Word file which could be opened by anyone and appear to be just a normal Word file. The intended recipient could use their
copy of Camouflage to open the file, enter the password and extract the embedded information. This free program is not intended to provide military strength protection but rather a convenient way to sneak information past unnecessarily prying eyes. (2.65MB)
http://arxspace.com/Camouflage/

Outlook Add-in Gives Email Account Flexibility
RealAccount is a freeware plug-in for MS Outlook 2002 that allows you to designate a default email account and signature for any Outlook Folder. The program is a late beta but has proved totally stable on my Windows XP Pro PC. Yet another free utility that provides functionality that should have been included in the original product. (338K)
http://www.realpopup.it/realaccount/

Share Bookmarks between Browsers
BookMarkBridge is a free open source utility that allows you to share and synchronize your bookmarks between several browsers. I've got 3 browsers installed at the moment: IE 6, Mozilla-Phoenix and Netscape 4.7.  BookMarkBridge correctly identified and synchronized the first two but it couldn't cope with the old version of Netscape.(2.69MB)
http://bookmarkbridge.sourceforge.net/

The CD "read only" Problem Solved
Anyone who has restored data from a CD onto their hard drive has faced the problem that all the restored files are marked as "read only" and cannot be modified. Changing these settings in Windows is a real pain particularly if a large number of files is involved. With this free utility you can change the file settings for dozens of files or even whole folders with a single click. Actually while the product is free of charge, the developer requests your feedback. None-the-less, ReadOnly should be on every PC. (315KB)
http://www.sente.co.uk/downloads.htm (towards bottom of page)