Absolutely Free Software -
Essential Windows Utilities

No shareware, no nagware, no adware. Reviewed constantly. Categorized conveniently.

This page is updated regularly. Last update: October 24, 2005.

Free Utilities - Essential

There are some utilities that I consider essential for most users. Other utilities are useful in their place, but here I'm going to concentrate here on the essential ones that you should install immediately.

I'll wait over here while you do that.

Free Desktop Search

Google Desktop Google Desktop

Copernic Desktop Search Copernic Desktop Search

new! updated August 22, 2005

Can't find that letter, or that email? Where did you put it? As hard drives get biiigger, it has become correspondingly hard to find all that stuff. Enter desktop search ( something of a misnomer, because you're searching all your drives, not just your desktop).

Move over Copernic, here comes Google! I had previously wrote that about Copernic that

"..it is the most customizable, indexes and searches the most types of documents and files, and even has support for Thunderbird email searching. No other product does this. "

Google has just released version 2 of its desktop search tool, and it has gotten much, much better, They have added a sidebar that will retrieve all kinds of things like email, weather, news, RSS feeds, etc., as well as having a quick way of finding photos (or almost anything else) on your hard drive. The search is more configurable and now supports Thunderbird email. Oddly, it will only index Thunderbird while the application is open.

For pure desktop search, I still prefer Copernic, but Google's new features make it a close contender.

http://desktop.google.com/

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/download.htm

Free File Compressor / File Archiver

7-Zip File Manager 7-Zip File Manager

IZArc IZArc

Once upon a time, almost everyone had shareware WinZip on their machines, and almost nobody registered it. (Before that it was PKZip, but I'm dating myself.) When Windows XP was unveiled with limited zip file compatibility, the demand for decompression utilities slowed down. But now, people are pushing files all over the internet in buckets of formats. RAR, JAR, BIN, CAB, ISO, IMG and more.

Both 7-Zip and IZArc are excellent compression utilities that handle a myriad of formats both single and multi-part. I actually have both installed, though I don't really know why.

http://www.7-zip.org/

http://www.izsoft.org/izarc.htm

Free Text Editor / Notepad Replacement

Notepad++ Notepad++

PSPad PSPad

update! August 23, 2005

There are many, many so-called "notepad replacements", and surprisingly, most of them are pretty good. I like Notepad++ for a few reasons. It's Open Source. It does everything I could want it to do. It's fast. It's been around for years. Here's some of the features:

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
Auto-completion
You can edit several documents at the same time.
You have two views at same time.
Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
Drag 'N' Drop
File Status Auto-detection
Zoom in and zoom out
Bookmark
Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
Macro recording and playback

new! 8/23 PSPad is an excellent text editor as well. It's more of a programmer's tool than Notepad++ and includes features only a programmer or web developer would ever need such as links to a compiler, a hex editor, and a built-in webserver. Unless you're a developer, stick with Notepad++. If you are a developer, you probably have already tried PSPad.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

http://pspad.com/

Free System Information

Aida32 Aida32

Everest Home Edition Everest Home Edition

Process Explorer Process Explorer

update! September 6, 2005

System information tools provide a convenient way to give you information about, hmm, your system. Hardware information from your keyboard to your RAM. Software information about running processes and installed programs. All details of your computer are laid out neatly for information or troubleshooting. Aida32 is the best of the system information tools. Unfortunately, the company that made it have stopped developing it, They now have a "lite" home product and a non-freeware professional version. The original Aida32 is still available, however.

"Some Guy" wrote to point out that the "lite" version that I referred to is called Everest Home Edition, and that it supports more recent hardware than the older Aida32. However, it will not run if it detects a corporate domain. thanks, Some Guy!

new! Added September 6, 2005
Process Explorer is a more specific tool that gives you extended information about all the processes running on your machine. Think super task manager. Among other things, it will let you know what process or handle is using any file or directory.

http://www.sofotex.com/AIDA32-download_L9326.html

http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

Free Start-Up Manager

StartupRun StartupRun

A utility junkie like me winds up with all kinds of programs that start automatically every time I restart my computer, which, admittedly, is not often. Even if you don't test out every piece of software under the sun like I do, you probably have at least a few things starting up that don't really need to. Some of these are "agents", stubs of larger programs that make the software seem like it loads more quickly when you decide to use it. Some are auto-updaters that check to see if a more-recent version of software is available. And some, unfortunately, might be spyware.

A good start-up manager lets you examine and disable if necessary all programs that launch themselves at start up. StartupRun gives detailed information on all such programs and provides you with powerful tools for managing them. A solid product.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/strun.html

Free File Renamer

Lupas Rename Lupas Rename

I use this tool a lot. In this, our age of a gazillion digital photos, a tool for renaming masses of files is essential. For example, pick a directory of a hundred photos, each with an oh-so-useful name like DCP9741.jpg. Lupas Rename allows you to select all the files and rename them in a batch to, for example, nedwolf_is_hot_001.jpg and nedwolf_is_hot_002.jpg. You get the idea. Of the various file renamers, I find Lupas easy to use and with more features than I will ever need.

http://www.azheavymetal.com/~lupasrename/download.php

Free Clock Setter

Dimension 4 Dimension 4

That clock in the lower-right-hand corner of your screen? It's wrong. Unless have a tool to sync your computer's time, that is. Dimension 4 syncs your clock to an official time server via SNTP or TCP. If you're not sure what that means, don't worry about it. Just get it.

http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/

Free File Backups

SyncBack SyncBack

10/24 - I had previously stated that 2brightsparks no longer offers the free version of this utility. I was wrong. In an email exchange with Michael J. Leaver from 2BrightSparks he informed me that:

"It is still available, and still free, and still being updated. You can download it, and other freeware we offer, here:
http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html
Just scroll down the page, and it's all there.

... Unfortunately since we released SyncBackSE (in February) a lot of people assumed that we'd stopped making the freeware version available."

Thanks for the correction, Michael!

I'm confident that you have full up-to-date backups of your important files or even your entire hard drives. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm sorry, give me a second. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What's that? You've been remiss? Welcome to the club. Sad to say, but very few people back up their data like they should. Like crashing on a motorcycle or hurting a knee playing football, hard drive failures are inevitable. If you ride, play, or use a computer long enough, you're going to crash, hurt, or lose a drive.

SyncBack is solid, straightforward tool that allows you to synchronize or perform complete backups of whatever you choose, including entire drives, to another directory, drive, medium, ftp server, or network location. If you like, you can configure SyncBack to start automatically and perform it's magic without user involvement.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html

Free System Optimization

CCleaner CCleaner

new! updated August 19, 2005

Clean up your mess, doggone it! Blindingly fast tool that will remove temp files, unused files, etc. Clean up your browser cache, cookies, third-party application temp files. Even includes a registry scanner. Very, very useful.

http://www.ccleaner.com/