A collection of my favourite software.

Essential Software | Tweaking Software | Tweaking Windows XP | System Tools | Free Software | Commercial Software

Essential Software:

DirectX (free)
DirectX is quite essential when playing games on your PC. The latest version isn't always the best, so make sure you read something about it first or ask help on some Forums - http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

DivX (free)
DivX is a video codec used in many video files nowadays. Everyone should have it installed. - http://wwww.divx.com/

XviD (free)
XviD is also a video codec with even better quality/filesize ratio's. Some movies make use of this codec (especially dvd-rips). - http://www.xvid.org/ Binaries: http://www.roeder.goe.net/~koepi/

Tweaking Software:

X-Setup (free)
A free and powerful tool to tweak and change your Windows OS. Has many functions and registry export functions; so your tweaks can be exported to .reg files which can be used on other PC's. - http://www.xteq.com/

TweakUI (free)
TweakUI is a free tool from Microsoft to tweak your Windows OS. There are many settings that can be altered with this tool, settings which you could normally only alter thru the registry or another (maybe commercial) program. - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

Tweaking Windows XP:

http://www.blackviper.com/ - Lots of information on Windows XP Services. Includes a tutorial to set up different harware profiles, with each different services enabled/disabled. For advanced users only though. Following his tips definitely gives performace improvements.

http://www.tweakxp.com/ - Tweaks and tips for Windows XP.

System Tools:

Various system analyzing tools
These can be _very_ handy. Some examples are Regmon, Diskmon, Filemon and NTFSDOS. Most utilities are freeware or with limited functions (full functionality when you purchase it). - http://www.sysinternals.com/

PC Inspector File Recovery (free)
Recovers deleted files from writeable media like harddisks, floppydisks or flashdrives. Saved my ass couple of times. - http://www.pcinspector.de/

RegeditX (free)
A shell (_not_ a replacement) for the standard Regedit in Windows. Can be very useful because there are options for favorite locations and an adress bar, so you can paste locations in it. - http://www.dcsoft.com/

Uxtheme.dll (free)
This isn't really software though, but some commercial (StyleXP) software is only modifying this dll, but you can do it yourself. Basically this dll is a patched one, and it makes it possible for users of Windows XP to use alternate themes (or skins). These can be downloaded from http://www.themexp.org/. As far as I know only StyleXP compatible skins work with this dll. Details about installation are in the zipfile. - Download Uxtheme.dll

Free Software:

FreeRAM
A tool tha automatically reclaims RAM from the operating system and applications. This decreases load time and improves application performance. - http://www.bysoft.com/

CKRename
An awesome file renaming utility that'll appear in the contextmenu of any folder. Many options and very handy if you collect or want to rename a large number of files (photo's, mp3's, etc.) - http://www.musicsucks.com/CKSoft/index.htm

TreeSize
Very useful tool which will appear in the contextmenu of any folder. You can see the amount of space that folders take with handy graphs, colours and numbers. - http://www.jam-software.com/

DAMN NFO Viewer
Useful to view .nfo files that are often found with warez and rom releases. .nfo files are quite cool to view, because they often contain l33t ASCII art. - http://www.damn.to/

IrfanView
In my opinion the BEST program to view image files. It also has useful batch renaming/conversion/resizing/etc. functions. - http://www.irfanview.com/

Resource Hacker
A cool tool which enables you to hack into (most) programs and alter resources like lay-out, images, icons, etc. - http://rpi.net.au/~ajohnson/resourcehacker/

7-Zip
7-Zip is a file compression tool which has the highest compression algorithm of all! It supports the 7-Zip format (.7z), but also others like Bzip2, Gzip, Tar and Zip. It's free and very powerful. The GUI might be a bit uncomfortable and has less functions than WinRAR's, but the contextmenu is OK. Highly recommended if you compress files a lot. - http://www.7-zip.org/

Camstudio
Camstudio is an open source rival of Techsmith's Camtasia; it's just as good or even better. It enables you to record on-screen activity with a special losless video codec which they developed themselves. You can save it in many videoformats as well as in Flash (.swf). It's a fun program and very handy for sprite rippers. - http://www.rendersoftware.com/products/camstudio/

AiDA32
A system information tool that can display a lot of info about your PC. Very useful for identifying devices inside your computer. - http://www.aida32.hu/

Rawwrite Win
Rawwrite can create or write image files of floppy disks. Cool for making a collection of floppy disk images on your harddisk (if you're a sysop or something) - http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux

WinAmp
WinAmp is a freeware audio player designed for playing .mp3 files, but it can handle much more formats. It's small, skinnable, has many plugins and it looks cool too! I recommend using WinAmp 5. I generally advice you use WinAmp 2.x or 5; it's faster and doesn't have as many bugs as WinAmp3. Go download it! - http://www.winamp.com/

XMPlay
A cool music player which is very good at playing tracked music (.mod, .xm, s3m, etc.) - http://www.un4seen.com/

MODPlug
Also a cool music player which sounds a bit better than XMPlay, imo. Specially designed to play tracked music as well. - http://www.modplug.com/

Game Audio Player
An audio player that's made to play game audio (PC games) that's in a non-standard format. Very l33t for listening to MDK2's music for instance. - http://bim.km.ru/

ReForce
As taken from the Readme; "This program is a UNIVERSAL and PERMANENT fix for the Windows 2000/XP refresh rate problem (whereas games run at lower refresh rates (60Hz) than possible, thus causing headaches, eye strain etc.). It works with ANY monitor (including the Plug & Play ones), and ANY graphics card!" - http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/

Compare
Tool to compare 2 directories, can be very useful at times.
http://emam.mameworld.net / http://www.emam.fsnet.co.uk/

Commercial Software:

WinRAR
Powerful file compression utility. Has RAR compression; superior to the ZIP compression algorithm. Easy to use program too. - http://www.rarlabs.com/

MicroAngelo
Cool program to make and edit icons and cursors. - http://www.microangelo.us/

CDRWin
A cool util to do anything with your CD Recorder. Burn CD's, make images, burn images, and much more. Made with the expert in mind. - http://www.goldenhawk.com/

IsoBuster
A tool that can make images of CD-ROMs (ISO's), open images to view contents, read/recover data from CD-ROMs and a lot more. It also works with DVD's. - http://www.isobuster.com/

UltraEdit
The best program for editing all kinds of ASCII files; html, c, asm or just plain text. It has many features that makes this program very handy. - http://www.ultraedit.com/

Paint Shop Pro
Very good alternative for the insanely high priced Photoshop. Has many functions for retouching digital or scanned photo's, and is my favourite program for graphics editing. - http://www.jasc.com/

Norton Ghost
Ghost is used for making images of complete harddisks or partitions which can be burned directly on CD/DVD or placed on another harddisk/partitition to be restored in case of a disaster or when you feel the need for a freshly installed system. - http://www.symantec.com/ghost/

Partition Magic
Very useful and easy to use program for making and changing partitions on your harddisk. - http://www.powerquest.com/

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