Rusty's General PC Software & Maintenance Tutorial

Intro

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 email

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.