[Howard]

All the programmes below are free and compiled from the posts made in this thread.

Antivirus

AVG

Avast

Avira AntiVir

On-demand scanners

ClamWin (portable)

Doctor Web CureIt! (portable)

McAfee AVERT Stinger (portable)

McAfee AVERT Stinger Conficker Edition (portable)

Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool

Sophos Conficker Clean-up Tool

Firewall

Agnitum Outpost

Online Armor

ZoneAlarm

PC Tools Firewall Plus

Sunbelt Kerio

Comodo

Antispyware

Malwarebytes Antimalware

Spybot Search & Destroy

Ad-Aware

Spyware Blaster

SUPERAntiSpyware

Windows Defender

Antibot

Trend Micro RUBotted

BotHunter

Email

Gmail

Mozilla Thunderbird

SPAMfighter

SpamPal

Office

OpenOffice - free alternative to MS Office

Google Docs

AbiWord

Notepad ++

Rainlendar

Adobe Reader

Foxit Reader

Karen's Directory Printer

TED Notepad

Multimedia

All in one Codec Packs

Windows Media Player 11 - for XP (comes with Vista)

MediaMonkey

VLC media player

Foobar

Mp3tag

Duplicate Music Files Finder

RealPlayer

Real Alternative

QuickTime

QuickTime Alternative

News/RSS Feeds

FeedBurner

FeedReader

Feed Demon

Google Reader

Education/Fun

Google Earth

Google Sky

NASA Maestro

Napalm FireStarter

Desktop Graffitist

PicTexter

Cleaning and Tweaking

CCleaner

ATF Cleaner

Revo Uninstaller

JKDefrag

Iobit SmartDefrag

Defraggler

PC De-Crapifier

Download managers

FlashGet

Free Download Manager

Internet Download Manager

Download Accelerator Plus

Desktop

Launchy

ObjectDock

RocketDock

Samurize

Yahoo! Widget Engine

Google Desktop

Vulnerability scanners

SUMo

Secunia PSI

FileHippo Update Checker

Windows Vulnerability Scanner

Virtual environment

VirtualBox

Sandboxie

VMware

Microsoft Virtual PC

Backup

O&O DiskImage Express

SyncBack

Karen's Replicator

Cobian Backup

Gaming

IObit Game Booster

MAME

WoWus

Xfire

Archive/Compression

7-Zip

IZArc

PeaZip

Advanced Diagnostics & Repair

Belarc Advisor

Dial-a-fix

Everest Free Edition

TrendMicro HijackThis (only use with supervision)

Process Explorer

Process Monitor

System Spec

Imaging

Paint.NET

Google Picasa

FastStone Image Viewer

IrfanView

ScreenHunter

The Gimp

UnFREEz (gif animator)

Regards Howard