Windows opensource and/or freeware 
List of freely available windows software. NOT SHAREWARE.
Resources
Award-winning Web browser that’s fast, secure, and easy to use
free productivity suite compatible with all major office suites
VLC is a multimedia player for various audio and video formats
Spybot Search & Destroy is one of the best free antispyware tools. Spybot Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. Spybot-S&D is free, so there's no harm in trying to see if something snooped into your computer, too :)
uTorrent (actually µTorrent, pronounced as mu-Torrent), is an tiny, efficient and feature-rich P2P (Peer To Peer) BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. It was designed to use as little CPU, memory and space as possible, while offering all the functionality expected from advanced BitTorrent clients. Features : * Multiple simultaneous downloads * Configurable bandwidth scheduler * Global and per-torrent speed limiting * Quick-resumes interrupted transfers * RSS Downloader * Trackerless support (Mainline DHT)
A simple program that removes unused and temporary files from Windows machines. This excellent freeware cleans the following ...
· Internet Explorer · Firefox · Windows Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files · Registry cleaner · Third-party applications (Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip)
Ad-Aware provides protection from known Spyware including: Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components.
With Lavasoft's all new Code Sequence Identification (CSI) technology, you will not only be protected from known content, but will also have advanced protection against many of their unknown variants. To further protect you, Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition also has the capability to scan and list Alternate Data Streams (ADS) in NTFS enabled volumes. Ad-Aware SE's new scanning engine will scan your computer faster and more thoroughly than ever before!
Ad-Aware Personal edition is free for non-commercial use only.
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised.
Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, and even post pictures on your own blog.
Media Player Classic is an all-in-one video player
IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative Freeware (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows.
Some IrfanView features:
* Many supported file formats
* Multi language support
* Thumbnail/preview option
* Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
* Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
* Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
* Drag & drop support
* Fast directory view (moving through directory)
* Batch conversion (with image processing)
* Multipage TIF editing
* Multimedia player
* Print option
* Change color depth
* And much more...
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a bitmap editor suitable for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
PuTTY: A Free Telnet/SSH Client. Also allows secure portforwarding.
With it's tiny 1M download, Foxit Reader is a free reader for PDF documents. You can view, search, and print PDF documents with it. Loads fast! Nice on older machines.
Organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication.
- LAN over the Internet
- Zero-configuration VPN
- Secure peer-to-peer
VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility
emotely control a computer over TCP/IP, best vnc
"The Fastest Browser on Earth" is what it makers claim. The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, skins and advanced functions like Opera's groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS & ATOM Newsfeeds, IRC chat, voice commands, support for Gmail, Password Manager, and even Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) support. All this within a fast, customisable & secure interface. Watch out for the upcoming Opera 9 which will introduce even better features (including support for Widgets and BitTorrent) !
creates on-the-fly-encrypted volumes (data storage devices)
Part of Microsoft's free XP Powertoys collection of utilities, TweakUI gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
Version 2.10 requires atleast Windows XP Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2003.
Don't forget to checkout the other XP powertoys on that page !
The best VOIP telephony service that lets you call PC-to-PC for free and PC-to-Phone at super cheap prices. Awesome!
open source scalable vector graphics format (SVG) tool
Avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users, non-commercial users. Avast is one of the best freeware antivirus applications, with a robust detection engine, very fast & small online updates (great for dialup users), and even a skinnable interface ! Free registration key (valid for 1 year) can be obtained from: http://www.avast.com/i_kat_207.php?lang=ENG
Google Talk is a simple and free way to talk with and send instant messages to your friends. Like Gmail, Google Talk uses Google's innovative technologies to help people communicate more effectively and efficiently. Think of it as Google's approach to communications. Google Talk is easy and intuitive to use. All you need to make free calls is an Internet connection, a microphone, and a speaker. After you download Google Talk, sign in with your Gmail username and password. Invite your friends to download Google Talk, and once they do, you'll be able to talk or IM with them instantly. Google Talk is still in beta, but its developers are constantly improving upon it, and they are already working on extending the core XMPP protocols with their LibJingle API.
In depth analysis tool for scanning your computer for Spyware/Malware.
HijackThis scans areas of your registry and hard drive and returns a log of items which it detects. If you suspect your computer to be infected with spyware, then it is recommended that you run a scan with HijackThis and then post your log file on a support forum, where someone will be able to suggest which entries to remove.
FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.
easily create Adobe Acrobat® PDFs from any Windows application that can print.
text editor with the look and feel of Notepad but with more features
Allows you to use the mouse and keyboard of one computer on all your computers. Works across platforms and even allows copy and paste. i.e. you can copy stuff on your Mac, move the mouse to your Linux box and paste it there.
CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.
PSPad editor is freeware programmer editor. syntax highlighter, workspace management, file tree, fast, smart, easy.
Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client.No bloat, it's Easy and Small! Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation.
Plugins can be installed to add support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and other protocols.
Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:
A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel.
nLite is a tool for permanent Windows component removal and pre-installation Windows setup. After removal there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines. With nLite you will be able to have Windows installation which on install doesn't include, or even contain on cd, unwanted components.
DOSBox is a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms.
You can "re-live" the good old days with the help of DOSBox, it can run plenty of the old classics that don't run on your new computer!
Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. Nmap runs on most types of computers and both console and graphical versions are available.
image and photo editing tool for Windows 2000 and greater requires .net 2.0
- Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
- Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC
- Audio formats supported through official addons: FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR, 7-ZIP & ZIP archives
- Full Unicode support on Windows NT
- ReplayGain support
- Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
- Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
- Highly customizable playlist display
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts
- Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)
HTTrack is a free and easy-to-use offline browser utility.
Notepad++ is a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.
disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows
Great bittorrent app. Frequent updates, works well behind NAT.
Excellent graphic file organiser. Shows thumbnails of all graphics in a folder, can made basic adjustments, batch rename and modification, skinnable and more...
DVD Decrypter is a free tool which enables you decrypt and copy a DVD to your PC's hard disk. From there you can choose to watch them with the likes of PowerDVD and WinDVD or you can re-encode them to MPEG1 (VCD) or DivX. Advanced functionality can be found in the context menus.
DVD Decrypter can write most types of CD / DVD images via its 'ISO Write' mode, and it supports all the latest writers (including booktype / bitsetting on many of the major ones - i.e. BenQ, LiteOn, NEC, Plextor, Sony). You can even use DVD Decrypter to erase / format your rewritable media!
Kerio Personal Firewall (KPF) helps users control how their computers exchange data with other computers on the Internet or local network.
Kerio Personal Firewall is a necessity for all desktop computers connected to broadband Internet, using DSL, cable, ISDN, WiFi or satellite modems.
Within an organization, Kerio Personal Firewall prevents a single computer from attacks initiated by internal users. Remote workstations and laptops running KPF are protected from Internet born attacks.
Versions 4.2.2 and prior are FREE for home and personal use. Grab this version before it disappears !
TightVNC is a free, GPL-licensed, remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software.
MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles.
a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing.
Run any virtual machine
VMware Player lets you evaluate new or pre-release software contained in virtual machines, without any installation or configuration hassles. You can also share existing virtual machines with colleagues or friends—just use VMware Player to run any virtual machine.
ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003.
Free Word processing program similiar to commercial products
Bundled web server containing Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL
Many features http://www.cdburnerxp.se/features.php and very nice interface!
WinMerge is a Win32 tool for visual difference display and merging, for both files and directories.
GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer, and thus use your Gmail account as a file storage medium.
Ever since Google started to offer users a Gmail e-mail account, which includes storage space of over 2GB, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with. With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your Gmail account and retrieve them again.
GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.
Please be aware that support for this tool may suspend at any time if Google decides to block its use.
Wiki-like notebook for storing anything you can think of to write down
Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.
A free download manager that does everything other commercial softwares do and even more.
Lyrics search engine that searches and displays the song currently playing in your media player. Supports all popular media players like winamp, mediamonkey, foobar, WMP...
A diagram creation program program similiar to "Visio"
Belarc Advisor shows all the hardware and software installed on your PC right in your Web browser. You will see personalized advice on how well software and hardware products will work with your computer, along with a detailed description of your computer profile. All of your profile information is kept in privacy on your PC and is not sent to a Web server. The program also keeps your software serial numbers.
SpywareBlaster prevents you computer from becoming infested with spyware by blacklisting known bad ActiveX components. This is very similar to Spybot Search & Destroy's Immunize feature, however, they use a different blacklist.
a project management tool distributed under a GNU General Public License
TheOpenCD is a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software. The programs run in Windows and cover the most common tasks such as word processing, presentations, e-mail, web browsing, web design, and image manipulation. We include only the highest quality programs, which have been carefully tested for stability and which we consider appropriate for a wide audience.
replacement for the standard Windows Alt-Tab dialog
customisable performance meter and other applets for the desktop
ShrinkTo5 is the new, powerful and fast DVD copying engine (open source).
ShrinkTo5 can copy movies with an undeniably superior picture quality. No matter if you wish to copy just the main movie or the whole movie DVD, ShrinkTo5 always produces a superb picture quality, since the ShrinkTo5 engine always concentrates on the main movie. No tedious configuration is needed like with other copying tools, ShrinkTo5 will always find the perfect balance automatically.
AutoIt is a freeware Windows automation language. It can be used to script most simple Windows-based tasks
Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, modifying web page content, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.
Free CSS editor. Try free lite version in download section.
an enhanced calculator application that can solve equations
RootkitRevealer is an advanced root kit detection utility (freeware). It output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
RootkitRevealer successfully detects all persistent rootkits published at www.rootkit.com, including AFX, Vanquish and HackerDefender (note: RootkitRevealer is not intended to detect rootkits like Fu that don't attempt to hide their files or registry keys).
Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB Key (A.K.A. USB Thumb drive, USB Memory Stick or USB Wang) . It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers. It will also work from a CDRW drives (in packet mode), DVD RAM discs, DVD-RW's ZIP drives, external hard drives, some MP3 players, flash RAM cards, compact flash cards, small (or large) network drives at your workplace, Memory Stick Duos, and more.
- Organize music and edit tags in your audio library with a powerful, intuitive interface
- Automatically lookup and tag Album Art and other metadata
- Manage 50,000+ files in your music collection without bogging down
- Play MP3s and other audio formats, and never again worry about varying volume
- Record CDs into OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files
- Convert MP3s, OGG, FLAC and WMA files into other formats with the Audio Converter
- Create playlists and music mixes quickly and easily to suit any occasion
- Synchronize with iPods / MP3 players effortlessly and convert tracks on-the-fly
- Plus much more...
http://www.mediamonkey.com/product.htm
Yahoo! Widget Engine (formally known as Konfabulator) is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little windows called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.
Widgets features advanced graphics effects (such as sliding and fading) to blend fluidly into your desktop.
The format for these Widgets is completely open and easy to learn so creating your own Widgets is an extremely easy task.
You can easily change the look, feel, layout, even functionality of a Widget so that it matches your lifestyle and your desktop.