GanttProject is a free and easy to use Gantt chart based project scheduling and management tool. Features include:

• Task hierarchy and dependencies
• Gantt chart
• Resource load chart
• Generation of PERT chart
• PDF and HTML reports
• MS Project import/export
• WebDAV based groupwork

GFI Backup is an easy-to-use backup and recovery software solution that allows users to backup all their important files and, whenneeded, recover the data within minutes using the product’s wizard-driven interface. GFI Backup does not use a proprietary format; all data is saved to common ZIP files. This makes it easy to restore data to a computer that may not have GFI Backup installed on it.

GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package program. This page should help you get a taste of what GIMP is capable of.

NOTE: It comes in 2 flavours, "free" and "donor edition" and the only difference is that the donor edition gets the updates way before the free version.

This app allows multiple toolbars that you can customize in dozens of different ways, and much more.

Glary Undelete is a easy to use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems. It will bring back files emptied from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. It will even recover files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

gMote is a customisable tool that provides fast access to frequently used actions via mouse gestures.

A media player program that has a lot of features.

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

The GParted application is the GNOME partition editor for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions.The GParted application enables you to change the partition organization on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partitions. With GParted you can accomplish the following tasks:

• Create a partition table on a disk device.
• Enable and disable partition flags such as boot and hidden.
• Perform actions with partitions such as:
  • create or delete
  • resize or move
  • check
  • label
  • copy and paste

NOTE: No installation required, this is a standalone EXE program.

GPU-Z is a lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

As most developers, while testing a program you may get runtime errors displayed as windows error message boxes and would have to type these error messages in a search engine to find more about these errors and how to fix them. This tool will make this task very easy.

WARNING: This will only work with the 64-bit Vista.

Half Shell allows you to open selected folders in the 32 bit shell by pressing Shift-Enter. This enables you to use most 32 bit shell extensions.

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.

The HashCheck Shell Extension makes it easy for anyone to calculate and verify checksums and hashed from Windows Explorer. In addition to integrating file checksumming functionality into Windows, HashCheck can also create and verify SFV files (and other forms of checksum files, such as .md5 files).

HashTab is a Windows shell extension which adds a tab called "File Hashes" to the Windows Explorer file properties. The tab contains the MD5, SHA1 and CRC-32 file hashes. These are common hashes that are used to verify the integrity and authenticity of files. Many download sites list the MD5 hash along with the download link. The HashTab makes it very simple for Windows users to check these hashes on any file on the system without using external tools.

HDGraph is a tool allowing to graphically display the hard disk space usage. It shows all the directories and subdirectories of the hard drive on a single graph, allowing to see the largest directories at a glance. It is compatible with all storage visible in the Windows explorer : folder of hard disk drive, USB key, network folder, CD, DVD, etc...

Trend Micro™ HijackThis™ is a free utility that generates an in depth report of registry and file settings from your computer. HijackThis makes no separation between safe and unsafe settings in its scan results giving you the ability to selectively remove items from your machine. In addition to this scan and remove capability HijackThis comes with several tools useful in manually removing malware from a computer.

A professional hardware information and diagnostic tool supporting the latest components, industry technologies and standards. This tool is designed to collect and present the maximum amount of information possible about the computer's hardware which makes them suitable for users searching for driver updates, computer manufacturers, system integrators and technical experts as well. Retrieved information is presented in a logical and easily understandable form and can be exported into various types of reports.

CPUID Hardware Monitor is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, fans speed. The program handles the most common sensor chips, like ITE® IT87 series, most Winbond® ICs, and others. In addition, it can read modern CPUs on-die core thermal sensors, as well has hard drives temperature via S.M.A.R.T, and video card GPU temperature. Special hardware monitors such as abit® uGuru and Gigabyte® ODIN™ power supplies serie are supported too.

NOTE: Click on the image to download the ZIP file, and be sure to extract the correct 32 bit or 64 bit version from the ZIP download. Read the "readme" file for important instructions.

In Vista, Windows Explorer no longer shows thumbnails of HTML files. This functionality has simply been removed. This little addon for Windows Explorer will show thumbnails for HTML, MHTL and URL files.

IcoFX is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. With a wealth of tools and more than 40 effects at your fingertips, there’s virtually no limit to the icons you can create. You can easily convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images. IcoFX gives you the possibility to create icon libraries or change icons inside exe files.

• Save and Restore Icon positions for each (or every) screen resolution
• Transparent icon backgrounds or use any color
• Select any color for icon text
• Automatically hide icons when you don't need them and show them when you do
• Automatically or manually select the best color for the text background
• Quickly minimize all windows so that you can see your desktop wallpaper.

NOTE: You may want to create a Safely Remove Hardware shortcut to use instead though.

A freeware tool for geting rid of 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon.

IconViewer is a Windows Explorer extension that lets you easily view, copy, and save icon (ICO) and PNG files contained within .EXE programs and .DLL libraries. Open a file's Properties box, select the "Icons" tab, and view the icons contained in the file. This program is real handy to have for getting these ICO and PNG files.

IE PassView is a small utility that reveals the passwords stored by the Internet Explorer browser per website.

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application. It supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. It can burn Audio CD's from any file type supported via DirectShow / ACM - including AAC, APE, FLAC, M4A, MP3, MP4, MPC, OGG, PCM, WAV, WMA and WV.

InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows much like Nere. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

Input Director is a Windows application that lets you control multiple Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer. It is designed for folks who have two (or more) computers set up at home and find themselves regularly sliding from one system to the other. With Input Director, you can share a single keyboard/mouse across a set of systems. You switch which system receives the input either by hotkey or by moving the cursor so that it transitions from one screen to the other (in a very similar fashion to a multi-monitor setup). The idea being that you can position the monitors from two or more systems in a row and use a shared keyboard/mouse to control all of them. Input Director also supports a "shared" clipboard, in which you can copy data onto the clipboard on one system, transition across to another and paste.

NOTE: This is a stand-alone exe file that does not install on your computer.

InstalledCodec is a small utility that displays the list of all Codec drivers and DirectShow filters currently installed on your system. For each component the following information is displayed: Display Name, Type, Disabled Status, Installed/Modified Time, File Description, File Version, Company Name, Product Name, Filename, File Size, CLSID, Driver Key, and Filter Merit. It allows you to easily disable or enable any Codec or DirectShow component, or export the list into a text, xml, or html file.

iReboot is NeoSmart Technologies' simple yet effective reboot helper tool. iReboot sits in your taskbar at startup (only taking up 400KB of memory!) and lets you choose which operating system you want to reboot into. Instead of pressing restart, waiting for Windows to shut down, waiting for your BIOS to post, then selecting the operating system you want to boot into (within the bootloader time-limit!); you just select that entry from iReboot and let it do the rest!

A great graphic viewer and editor like Paint, but a whole lot better. It has a ton of options and is fully customizable with plug-ins and skins. You can use transparency to for thumbnails, etc...

ISODisk is a ISO disk image file tool, allows you to create virtual CD/DVD drives up to 20 drives, mount an .ISO disk image and access the files on it as if it were burned to CD or DVD. This free program can quickly create ISO image file from CD/DVD-ROM, with ISODisk, you don't need to install any other virtual drive software. Once you map the archive to a virtual drive, you are able to view the contents in Windows Explorer.

This program will allow you to record and burn ISO images to a CD/DVD, copy disks, make images of the existing data CDs and DVDs, and create ISO images from a content of a disk folder.

IZArc is is a archive utility supporting many archive formats like:7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools.It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in multilanguage support.

Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer. It is completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), versions for Windows X64, and the complete sources.

A Password manager that helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. You can also use the Portable version to allow you to store your passwords securely on your USB thumb drive.

A browser add-on, protects all your inputs against known and unknown keyloggers in IE, Firefox, and Flock: your login credentials, credit card numbers, passwords, search terms, Java, Flash, PDF Forms, web email, and more.

KLS Mail Backup is an easy to use backup program that allows you to back up and restore your Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox profile files.

KMPlayer is a video and audio media player which can play a large amount of formats such as VCD, DVD, AVI, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, and QuickTime among others. It handles subtitles and allows you to capture screenshots. You can set audio and video effects, slow down or increase playback speed, select parts of a video as favorites, and many more. KMPlayer is completely customizable with a wide selection of skins and color schemes, and the configuration options are extensive.

Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

LiberKey groups a lot of free software. True "swiss army knife", it offers local and/or portable use.

• Local use (directly installed in a hard disk directory)
• Portable use (installed on USB key, external hard drive, music player such as iPod, ...)

LockHunter is a free tool similar to Unlocker to delete files blocked by someone you do not know. LockHunter is useful for fighting against malware, and other programs that blocks files without a reason. Unlike other similar tools it deletes files into recycle bin so you may restore them if deleted by mistake. Supports 32-bit and 64-bit Vista.

NOTE: See this tutorial: How to Change the Logon Screen in Vista

Stardock LogonStudio will allow you to change the logon screen to whatever you want. You can download from a ton of already created logon screens or create your own from any .jpg, .png, or .bmp file.

Macrium Reflect Free Edition is a disk imaging program. It is a complete disaster recovery solution for your home and office. Protect your personal documents, photos, music and e-mails. Upgrade your hard disk or try new operating systems in the safe knowledge that everything is securely saved in an easily recovered backup file. Macrium Reflect suports backup to local, network and USB drives as well as burning to all DVD formats.

NOTE: Download and extract the files, then run (merge) the reg file to install. Next move the other EXE files to where you like (ex: C:\Program Files) so you can create shortcuts from them to use.

Madotate is a 3D desktop management program that helps organizing your work a lot. It lets you view any open window in 3D, rotate it in any position, and zoom the window in and out.

MagicDisc is very helpful utility designed for creating and managing virtual CD drives and CD/DVD discs.

This is anti-malware program that scans your computer to help keep your computer from becoming infected with viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, dialers, spyware, and malware.

Portable file checksum verifier that allows you to calculate many file checksums (hashes) and compare them with original one. Thanks to its simplicity and portability, it aims to be a portable, versatile and "must have" tool for dealing with single files and their checksums - to calculate, compare and verify them.

A nice web browser that shares Internet Explorer's rendering engine and a few other things like internet options. It can also save your Favorites online. It has many other features as well.

MediaMonkey is a music manager and player with a lot of features.

Memtest86 is a comprehensive stand-alone memory diagnostic program that you boot from at startup to test your RAM. You can download a ISO file to burn to DVD to boot with, or a floppy disk package installable from Windows to a USB flash drive or floppy disk to boot with.

Miranda IM is the smaller, faster, easier instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. Designed from the ground-up to be resource efficient while still providing a rich feature set, Miranda includes support for AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu and more.

MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc.

NOTE: Description page at - Most Recently Opened Folder

MRO (Most Recently Opened Folder Utility) is a Task Tray icon/background process combination for reopening the most recently opened folders you opened with Explorer.

Edit MP3 tags, find album tags and cover online, rename files faster.

MyDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer (a maintenance utility to make your harddisk faster) for Windows. Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy to use scripts for endusers, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus commandline version that can be scheduled by the Windows task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts.

My Lockbox is a security software enabling you to password protect any folder on your computer. The protected folder (lockbox) is hidden from any user and application of your system, including Administrator and System itself. It is impossible to access the lockbox not only from the local computer, but also from the net. The program is extremely easy to use. You can set the lockbox location and the password during the setup procedure. After the setup is done, lockbox will be hidden and locked until you enter the valid password. My Lockbox Control Panel allows you easily change basic lockbox parameters: lockbox location, protection status, password. In addition, skinned user interface lets you choose from different skins to select the most comfortable look and feel of the software.

Microsoft Network Monitor is a protocol analyzer. It allows you to capture network traffic, view and analyze it.

You can use NetWorx to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks. The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system. The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dialup duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.

Nexus is a multi-level dock system. Nexus provides fast access to your most frequently used applications, with flexible options allowing it to dock or float anywhere on the screen, providing a myriad of "On Demand" possibilities.

The Norton User Account Control tool will replace parts of the Windows Vista UAC system, and allow you have a "Remember Me" exception list for UAC to suppress future prompts from the same action.

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. From HTML to Java and over 40 other languages, Notepad++ makes parsing code easy with clear syntax highlighting and auto-completion intelligence.

Notepad2 is a free, open-source text editor. It has features such as auto-indent, brace matching, syntax highlighting, and code folding.

NOTE: To read about all of the features, see: Easy to use accounting software from Microsoft

Microsoft Office Accounting Express is an easy to use accounting package that works with other Office applications you already know.

OpenOffice is a open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.

NOTE: See this tutorial: How to Add a Program to Open With in Vista

When you right-click a file and choose Open With, and click the Choose Program... option, the list of registered applications are displayed in the Open With dialog. Programs that are not already listed in the Open With dialog can be added manually using the Browse... option. OpenWithAdd tool can be helpful in circumstances where, when you browse to locate an application, it does not get added to the Open With dialog.

OpenWithView is a small utility that displays the list of all available applications in the 'Open With' dialog-box of Windows, and allows you to easily disable or enable the applications in the list. When an application is disabled, it won't be displayed in the 'Other Programs' section of the 'Open With' dialog-box. This utility can be useful if your 'Open With' window displays too many applications, or you want to remove the applications that you don't use frequently.

Agnitum's Outpost Firewall Free gives you firewall protection with standard packet and application filtering to safeguard your data against unauthorized third parties. Plus, you get advanced protection against illegal program activity that will help stymie unknown threats.

NOTE: This runs in both the 32 bit and 64 bit Vista, but in 64 bit Vista it runs as a full native 64-bit program.

Paint.NET is a image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

A great backup and recovery program full of features.

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition and Partition Recovery.

AnalogX PCalc allows you to enter any equation in the EXACT same format as C/C++, and it will process it with the same precedence, giving you the results in a variety of formats! PCalc also supports the use of user-defined variables, and also has most of the common constants used already defined.

NOTE: This runs from a standalone exe file that does not install on your computer.

The PC Decrapifier is a program designed to remove or uninstall a specific list of unwanted software in an unattended fashion. It can be used to clean off most of the annoying software that is typically shipped with newer PCs.

PC Tools Firewall Plus is a free personal firewall for Windows that protects your computer by preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to your computer through the Internet or a network. By monitoring applications that connect to the network Firewall Plus can stop Trojans, backdoors, keyloggers and other malware from damaging your computer and stealing your private information

NOTE: For this program to work properly in Vista, you must check Run this program as an administrator in the Compatibility window for this program's shortcut after it is installed. For how, see: How to Use Compatibilty Mode in Vista

PC WIZARD 2008 is also an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, Cache performance, RAM performance, Hard Disk performance, CD/DVD-ROM performance, Removable/FLASH Media performance, Video performance, MP3 compression performance.

PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.

A PDF file reader that is an alternative to Adobe Reader.

Organize frequently used text snippets. Expand abbreviations as you type. Launch programs with text shortcuts. Auto-Complete repetitive phrases. Quick Access to the Windows Clipboard History. Correct Spelling mistakes in any application.

PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.

NOTE: You will need to right click on the installation program and click on Run as administrator for this to install.

This is a program that will allow you to add a watermark to any image. The watermark's transparency can be fully adjusted to what you want.

Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once.

PopMan is a POP3 and IMAP4 manager. It can be used to list all e-mails received on your incoming mail server, without having to load these mails completely. Unwanted e-mails can be deleted directly from the server. You can use PopMan to check your e-mail accounts in the background. When new e-mails arrive, you will be notified.

POP Peeper is an email notifier that runs in your Windows task bar and alerts you when you have new email on your POP3, IMAP (with IDLE support), Hotmail\MSN\LiveMail, Yahoo, GMail, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, iWon, Lycos.com, RediffMail, Juno and NetZero accounts. IMAP supports allows you to access AOL, AIM, Netscape and other services. Send mail directly from POP Peeper and use the address book to email your frequently used contacts. POP Peeper allows you to view messages using HTML or you can choose to safely view all messages in rich or plain text. Several options are available that will decrease or eliminate the risks of reading your email (viruses, javascript, webbugs, etc). POP Peeper can be run from a portable device and can be password protected. Many notification options are availble to indicate when new mail has arrived, such as sound alerts (configurable for each account), flashing scroll lock, skinnable popup notifier, customized screensaver and more.

Privatefirewall is a multi-layered endpoint security software that protects Windows desktops and servers from malware and unauthorized use. Personal firewall, packet inspection, URL filtering, process monitor, and application/system behavior modeling and anomaly detection components stop hackers, spyware, viruses and other forms of malware before they can cause damage.

NOTE: This program does not install. It is a stand alone EXE file with a help file.

Process Explorer is an advanced process management utility that picks up where Task Manager leaves off. It will show you detailed information about a process including its icon, command-line, full image path, memory statistics, user account, security attributes, and more. When you zoom in on a particular process you can list the DLLs it has loaded or the operating system resource handles it has open. A search capability enables you to track down a process that has a resource opened, such as a file, directory or Registry key, or to view the list of processes that have a DLL loaded.

NOTE: See these tutorials also: How to Make a Program or Process Run with a Higher or Lower CPU Priority in Vista and How to Set the Processor Affinity for a Application in Vista

Process Lasso is a unique new technology intended to automatically adjust the allocation of CPU cycles so that system responsiveness is improved in high-load situations. It offers capabilities such as default process priorities and affinities, termination of disallowed processes, a system responsiveness graph, logging of processes, and much more!

NOTE: This program does not install. It is a stand alone EXE file with a help file.

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry, and process/thread activity. It is way more advanced than the Resource Monitor that comes with Vista.

NOTE: Be sure to download the correct 32 bit (x86) or 64 bit (x64) version of Produkey for your version of Vista.

ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of MS-Office, Windows, Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed on your computer. You can view this information for your current running operating system, or for another operating system/computer - by using command-line options. This utility can be useful if you lost the product key of your Windows/Office, and you want to reinstall it on your computer.