In this tutorial I'll show you exactly how you can protect your computer without spending a dime. Although I do have some very detailed tutorials out there this one will be an all encompassing tutorial that will walk you through on getting a fresh install of XP up to speed with everything you could need to keep it safe & secure. And do this all without having to pay insane amounts of money for bloated software. If you have tips or comments feel free to reach me by email via
Firewall - Only Select One
Sygate Personal Firewall 8.8MB - My favorite free personal firewall of choice.
Kerio Personal Firewall 5.26MB
Comodo Free Firewall 7.57MB - Another option, for a free firewall.
ZoneAlarm Free Firewall 39.65MB - Probably one of the most popular free firewalls out there.
Anti-Virus - Only Select One
AVG Free Anti-Virus 25.35MB - My favorite free anti-virus software
AntiVir Personal 16.38MB - Free anti-virus that's very popular
Avast! Home Edition 15.55MB - Another popular anti-virus
Spyware & Adware - Install them All
Ad-Aware SE Personal 2MB - Ad-Aware provides protection from known Spyware.
AVG Anti-Spyware 11.84 - A popular free antispyware solution available at no cost to home users.
Bazooka Spyware Scanner 727KB - Detects a multitude of spyware, adware, trojan, keylogger, foistware and trackware components.
CCleaner 2.50MB - A freeware system optimization and privacy tool.
CWShredder 520KB - CWShredder finds and destroys traces of CoolWebSearch, the browser hijacker.
Rootkit Revealer 226KB - RootkitRevealer is an advanced root kit detection utility.
Spybot Search & Destroy 7.34MB - Can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer.
Spyware Blaster 2.45MB - Powerful protection against spyware & adware.
Windows Defender 4.95MB - Helps protect from spyware and other unwanted software.
Web Browser - You Pick
FireFox 5.74MB - The award-winning Web browser is better than ever.
Opera 4.62MB - Full-featured browser, includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera's groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat, & voice commands.
Multimedia
Audacity - 2.57MB - Free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows.
CDex 2.0MB - A very powerful cd ripping tool to rip from CD to MP3 collection.
GSpot 402KB - free utility which identifies the codec required to play an AVI file and supplies other information
Mastroka Codec Pack 3.80MB - Video Codec packs to get your videos to play right
Nimo Codec Pack 6.8MB - Same as above
RipCast 1.1MB - Record directly from streaming-audio stations to mp3.
Vpod 220KB - A program for transferring music to your iPod from Windows.
Video Lan Client (VLC player) 9.2MB - a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video.
WinAmp 2.95 2.4MB - My favorite audio & video player of choice. Older versions are horribly bloated with unnecessary crap.
Internet
CuteFTP 1.3MB
Angry IPScanner 109KB - Angry IP scanner is a very fast IP scanner and port scanner.
NeoTrace 1.42MB - A powerful visual tracing program to trace other computers on the Internet.
Network Stumbler 1.3MB - Award-winnin wireless network scanning tool
Semagic (Live Journal client) 932KB - Windows client application for weblogs based on LiveJournal.
SuperScan4 197KB - Powerful TCP port scanner, pinger, resolver.
Trillian 8.61MB - Fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC.
X-NetStat 1.8MB - Display information on all your current Internet and network connections in a graphical interface.
Copying & Burning
Alcoholer 564KB - Used to deal with various copy protections on different storage media.
Blindwrite Suite 6.18MB
- Disc copying/archive software.
CDRwin 914KB - Disc burning/copying software.
CloneCD 2.6MB - Backup your music, data or navigation CDs.
Daemon Tools 1.53KB - CD/DVD emulation software.
DVD Decrypter 879KB - Rips encrypted dvd video files onto your hard drive.
DVDShrink 1.04MB - Software to backup DVD discs
IsoBuster 2.6MB - CD and DVD Data Recovery/Rescue software.
KProbe 2.2MB - A testing tool for CD & DVD Media Quality Testing
Nero 173MB - A popular optical disc authoring program.
Downloading
Azureus 5.2MB - Very Powerful BitTorrent downloading program.
Download Accelerator 6.3MB - A download accelerating program, speeds up your downloads.
DUMeter 994KB - A bandwidth meter that monitors your download speeds.
SoulSeek 823KB - Best p2p download program left.