List of recommended Windows software

Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware

/g/'s #1 anti-virus choice

It is not recommended to use an active (always-running) antivirus. To avoid the huge performance-hit ^{[Citation needed]} that comes with this, only scan your PC with scanning-software such as

MalwareBytes

or simply use some common sense. For people lacking common sense:

• Avira - Avira Free Antivirus
• Mircosoft Security Essentials - Designed to only be a "baseline", and the worst product (security-wise) per Microsofts's own admission [1].
• Nod32 (non-free)
• Avast - Avast Free Antivirus available

Archiving

• 7-Zip - LGPL, handles every compression format you are likely to encounter, and a bunch you aren't unless you're a time traveler from a BBS circa 1991.
• WinRAR - WinRAR is also a Archiving software just like 7-Zip, does the same thing. Proprietary commercial software that doesn't respect your freedom, and doesn't handle the same number of compression formats. Basically, use if you're an idiot.

Audio Editor

• Audacity

Audio Players

• Foobar2000 - freeware; lightweight and customizable
• MusicBee - freeware; less customizable than foobar2000, but still powerful and better out-of-the-box
• MediaMonkey - freemium; powerful media player with a great database
• AIMP - Freeware, considered successor to WinAmp

Cleaner

• CCleaner - Clears the bloat left by the apps, from cookies to uninstalleed apps remains
• CCEnhancer - CCleaner additions
• Revo Uninstaller

Computer Specs

• Speccy
• GPU-Z
• CPU-Z

Defragmenter

Don't use these on your SSD, you moran.

• Defraggler
• MyDefrag - Freeware, based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft. Also optimizes file locations.

Disk Burning

• ImgBurn - Make sure to uncheck any of the 'freebies' (Conduit Toolbars) and you'll be fine.
• BurnAware - free and non-free version
• CDBurnerXP - free, download the version without botnet (OpenCandy) here

Encryption

• Truecrypt - Freeware, open source. Does it work? Maybe?

File Recovery

See also: Data Recovery

• Recuva
• TestDisk

Firewall

• Windows Default
• Your Router's Firewall
• Tinywall - interesting wrapper for the Windows firewall
• Comodo Firewall
• ZoneAlarm

FTP Clients

• Filezilla - Free and open source, GPL v2.

Hex Editor

• XVI32
• Frhed

Image Editor

• GIMP - A popular Photoshop alternative. Is good if you know how to use it correctly.
• Paint.NET - Started as a MS Paint alternative, now integrates plenty of features such as layers and effects
• InkScape - Vector graphic editor. FOSS.

Image Viewer

• IrfanView
• ACDSee Classic
• Picasa Photo Viewer (suspected to be a botnet)
• Xnview
• Honeyview (for weaboo ricers)

Office Suite

• LibreOffice - After Oracle acquired OpenOffice, it asked community members to GTFO [2]. Since everyone despises Oracle, the developers all jumped ship as well [3] and stared LibreOffice.
• OpenOffice - If you're an idiot, and want to use a dying and deprecated program [4] for some for some bizarre reason. Oddly, things didn't work out for Oracle, so they gave the license to the Apache Foundation who released it under their own license.

PDF Reader

• SumatraPDF - free and open source document reader

Screen Capture

• Open Broadcaster Software - free and open source software for recording and live streaming.

Text Editor

• Notepad++
• (g) Vim
• Emacs
• Sublime Text - Not free (officially) but beautiful out of the box and tons of features. The 'evaluation' can be used forever like WinRAR but each time you open it and save a few times it nags you (once) to buy it and makes you feel bad.

Torrent Clients

Official /g/ Torrent Guide v1.1

• qBittorrent - Free and open source. Extendable, lots of features. The uTorrent of the FOSS world.
• BareTorrent - Also free and open source. Very minimal and lightweight - downloads Torrents and pretty much nothing else.
• Deluge - Free and open source, GPL v3. Very extendable and lots of features, but can be sluggish and hogs resources.

Terminal Emulators

• Cygwin - Terminal that gives you the feel of GNU/Linux on windows.

Video Encoder

H.264&Others

• HandBrake - Very basic
• MeGUI - Supports Hi10P encoding
• StaxRip - Supports fairly advanced audio encoding, batch processing

H.265

• x265 - Pre-alpha x265 builds

Video Player

What you can expect from playback using VLC (animated)

• MPC-HC - open-source; with the madVR renderer for GPU rendering and more features (Download here)
• mpv - open-source, supports H.265 playback. A fork of mplayer(2). (Download here)
• VLC - VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. (Download here)
• PotPlayer - Freeware piece of shit written by koreans that violates the GPL, Use MPC-HC or mpv instead you hipster faggot.

Virtual CD/DVD Drive

• WinCDEmu
• Virtual CloneDrive
• DAEMON Tools Lite - WARNING: contains adware and send informations about the iso you mount unless you manually disable this behaviour.

Virtual Desktop Manager

• VirtuaWin - Allows you to use multiple virtual desktops

Virtual Machine

• VMWare (non-free)
• VirtualBox

Misc & Utilities

• AltDrag - Allows you to use Alt and drag your windows. Information and guides
• Process Explorer - A better task manager

See Also

• Recommended Software (OS X)
• Recommended software (Linux)