Must have programs seriously needs an update!

[ordskiweicz]

I suspect there have been changes since 2004! (Of course I haven't upgraded either my hardware or my software since DOS).

What are the must haves now?

AV = MSE, EST, Kapersky

VLC

WinAmp

EAC for ripping

I still use 2 explorer as a dual panel explorer alternative - runs fine on 8, free for non-commercial, academic use.

I use DVD Fab to rip DVDs (but don't use many of its options)

I use several others regularly but will stop and let the group mind guide!

[DPete27]

Since we're on the subject, has anybody heard the latest on MSE losing their AV certification? I have to assume that Microsoft quickly deployed a team to work on a fix to get their cert. back. Should we be looking elsewhere for free AV programs. I am using Avast on my gaming computer and it's decent but I'm not in love with it.

I like Media Player Classic for my video viewing needs.

Daemon Tools Lite for mounting disc images. IMO, You need something like this these days since optical media is dissapearing. Heck, I don't even have an optical drive in my new rig that I built in August.

Other programs are probably more specific to your usage. CPUZ and HWMonitor are must-haves for me with new builds to make sure everything is running properly and temps are good.

[steelcity_ballin]

http://filehippo.com/ Sup.

[sircharles32]

For virtualization, I use both VMWare Player (free for home use) and Virtualbox.
For Ripping, I still find that DVD Decrypter works well with older DVDs and mainstream TV shows.
With that said, I still use Gordian Knot to encode my DVDs into Divx .avi files (I have little to no need for .mkv files, as the quality gain is lost to the speed of a divx encode).
For cutting,splicing, and light re-encode jobs, I use Virtualdub and TMPGEnc
Media Player: I whole heartedly agree on VLC (works with everything I've got)
Compression: I now use 7-zip for everything (even the occasional .rar file)
For some reason, I still prefer using WinAmp, for my MP3s.

That's, at least, some of the software I use with any regularity.

[Flatland_Spider]

WinCDEMU (http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/) for mounting ISOs. (How does Windows still not have this?)

IZArc (http://www.izarc.org/) for compression formats that aren't zip. (It's an okay program, but I haven't found anything to replace it.)

MuCommander (http://www.mucommander.com/) for connection to NFS shares and WebDav mainly.

Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/) for my music player.

Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/) for whatever light image editing I need to do.

Irfan View (http://www.irfanview.com/) because it supports a wide variety of image formats.

Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org) for running Unix-like guests on Windows because Cygwin doesn't really cut it.

Microsoft Mathematics (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downloa ... x?id=15702) because MS killed the PowerToys calculator that I liked.

Python3 (http://www.python.org/) because it's cross-platform and I like it.

PSPad (http://www.pspad.com/) for text editing. (I'm still keeping my options open.)

Moo0 System Monitor (http://www.moo0.com) for a systems monitor. (Coolmon went dormant, so I needed something else.)

Dexpot (http://www.dexpot.de) for virtual monitors.

PuTTY (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) for SSH connections.

WinSCP (http://winscp.net/) because it compliments PuTTY very nicely.

WinDirStat (http://windirstat.info/) for find what is eating my disk space.

WinMerge (http://winmerge.org/) for merging files and folders.

Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) because it's good for FTP diagnostics.

Xming (http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/) because Windows does not have an X11 server.

Mercurial (http://mercurial.selenic.com/) for source control.

MobaXterm (http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) is a great portable Cygwin environment, and it's nice when I don't have a full environment.

[Chrispy_]

Here's my list. Most of it is on Ninite.com which strips a lot of the bloatware out of the installers, especially for the runtimes

7-zip
CDBurnerXP
Chrome, Opera or Firefox
CutePDF
Foxit Reader
Filezilla
K-Lite Codec pack (including Media Player Classic)
Logmein, or Teamviewer for a PC I'm likely to be connecting to over WAN
MSE, Avast, or AVG Free. If you're building for idiots who click to win iPads, Russian brides, or to speed up their computer then MalwareBytes is mandatory.
Notepad++
OpenOffice
Putty
RealVNC for LAN clients instead of Logmein or Teamviewer
Spotify
The GIMP
Trillian
WinDirStat

Then there's the runtime selection of Flash/Java which you only install if you absolutely can't live without it. Oracle and Adobe are like the pedophile rapists of the PC industry, as proven by most of the IT security experts on the planet.

[absurdity]

WinCDEMU (http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/) for mounting ISOs. (How does Windows still not have this?)

Oh but it does! Hello Windows 8.

[axeman]

Media Player Classic was mentioned earlier, but I thought I'd add the fact the link was actually to MPC-HC. The "Home Cinema" version is much updated over the original project which has been abandoned. Notably it supports GPU accelerated decoding, which may be of interest to some (although VLC supports DXVA now as well, I'm not a big fan of VLC's UI since forever). You might want to also check out MadVR which handles scaling and some other fun stuff using GPU shaders:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228

[axeman]

Some other suggestions:

ffdshow tryouts and Haali Media Splitter over K-Lite Codec pack, no sense installing everything under the sun which is what K-Lite does. If you want a "codec pack", try CCCP which is far more minimal. But really the biggest useful piece in the codec packs is ffdshow tryouts anyhow.

http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/
http://haali.su/mkv/
http://www.cccp-project.net/


Sumatra PDF over Foxit. Foxit is not that light anymore, and bundles toolbars now. Ewwww. Sure you can choose not to install them, but maybe I'm having a brain-fart day, and I click next, next, next as usual.

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sum ... iewer.html

TightVNC over RealVNC. I prefer something GPL. TightVNC stagnated for some time, but I believe it's now pretty much on par with the free versions of RealVNC.

[Flying Fox]

http://www.cccp-project.net/

Is CCCP still 32-bit only?

Sumatra PDF over Foxit. Foxit is not that light anymore, and bundles toolbars now. Ewwww. Sure you can choose not to install them, but maybe I'm having a brain-fart day, and I click next, next, next as usual.

I still keep around a real PDF app for the odd cases, but I have been using Chrome to read PDF files ever since it first gained the ability to do so. If the document does not contain complex graphics (usually motherboard manuals) or has some weird fonts, it renders fine.

[ChronoReverse]

http://www.cccp-project.net/

Is CCCP still 32-bit only?

Generally speaking, 64bit codecs are pretty pointless as there are no benefits (performance or compatibility) right now.

You're also better off spending the extra few minutes setting up madVR, LAV filters, MPH-HC and Haali's splitter (and maybe ffdshow tryouts) to handle everything properly.

[Flatland_Spider]

WinCDEMU (http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/) for mounting ISOs. (How does Windows still not have this?)

Oh but it does! Hello Windows 8.

Ah, I see. Why do I still not have that?!

[RealWolf]

Malware Tools
TDSSKiller
Anti Rootkit, checks boot sector. Small and fast.

HitmanPro
Not a complete scan, but very fast. I use it to quickly confirm that a machine is infected and remove the worst offenders. It has also informed me of network issues. Highly recommend.

Malwarebytes
If you're not using Malwarebytes, you're doing it wrong

Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit BETA
I've only been using this for a couple weeks, but so far have been impressed. Scans more of the system than TDSSKiller, but is much faster than a full Malwarebytes scan.

Housecall
Slow when running a full scan, but a nice double check / final scan.

HiJackThis
USE CAUTION. Useful for removing startup entries left by malware.

ComboFix
USE CAUTION. I've seen combofix do amazing things repairing damage from malware.

FileHippo Update Checker
Useful to check for old browser / java / reader versions after removing malware

[axeman]

Unhide.exe Undo the results of malware that hides massive amounts of files on the hard disk. Can be fixed manually, but it is a PITA.