> Free software

[#freeware]

CentOS - The Community ENTerprise Operating System [http://www.centos.org/]
Looking for a RedHat replacement? Try CentOS!
CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free.

KeePass Password Safe [http://keepass.info/]
KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

CutePDF Writer [http://www.cutepdf.com/]
Create PDF documents on the fly - for Free! Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world. CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a printer subsystem. This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button! FREE for personal and commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads!

Picasa [http://picasa.google.com/]
The most easy to use photo manager available.

SysInternals [http://www.sysinternals.com/]
The Sysinternals web site provides you with advanced utilities, technical information, and source code related to Windows NT/2000/XP/2K3 and Windows 9x, Windows Me internals that you won't find anywhere else. Be sure to check out their tools like: Process Explorer, Autoruns, Filemon, Regmon and PsTools.

Irfanview [http://www.irfanview.com]
IrfanView is a very fast FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) 32-Bit graphic viewer for Windose 9x, NT and 2K.

VNC Viewer [http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/]
VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures.

PuTTY [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/]
A Free Win32 Telnet/SSH Client.

UPX - the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables [http://upx.sourceforge.net/]
UPX is a free, portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for several different executable formats. It achieves an excellent compression ratio and offers very fast decompression. Your executables suffer no memory overhead or other drawbacks.

BLAT for Windows [http://www.blat.net/]
Blat is a Public Domain Windows 95/NT console utility that sends the contents of a file in an e-mail message using the SMTP protocol. Blat is useful for creating scripts where mail has to be sent automatically (CGI, backups, etc.), or just as a quick way to send a file or message quickly from the command line. It will store relevant configuration details in the registry for ease of use. Optionally, blat can also attach multiple binary files to your message.

GNU utilities for Win32 [http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/]
Here are some ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32. In this context, native means the executables do only depend on the Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll) and not an emulation layer like that provided by Cygwin tools. Remark from bart: This is great stuff!

AVG Antivirus Free Edition [http://free.grisoft.com/]
AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product!

cURL groks URLs [http://curl.haxx.se/]
Curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, GOPHER, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP. Curl supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, kerberos, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication, file transfer resume, http proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks.

> Not freeware - but great

[#buyware]

Total Commander [http://www.ghisler.com/]
Total Commander (formerly called Windows Commander) is a shareware file manager for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and Windows 3.1. It has two windows side by side, just like the good old Norton Commander file manager for DOS.
The best file manager for the money, it is great!

Ultraedit [http://www.ultraedit.com/]
Text/Hex editor, unlimited file size. Column edit with column fill,cut,delete, insert squential number. HEX editing with cut/copy/paste. Macros, bookmarks, find/replace, word-wrap, fixup CR/LF. Auto indentation, backup file, 100,000 word spell checker, line/column display, multiple windows on same file, syntax highlighting, print preview, goto, drag and drop, find in files, templates....
Actual, the whole NU2 site is typed/coded in Ultraedit!

> Autorun solutions (free software)

[#autorun]

ShelExec [http://www.naughter.com/shelexec.html]
Places where you might find ShelExec useful are in adding an Autorun.inf file to your CD-R / CD-RW Discs. For example suppose you have a HTML page called index.htm on the root of your CD which you would like to run automatically whenever the user inserts the CD.

Custom CD Menu [http://www.smart-projects.net/customcdmenu.htm]
Custom CD Menu is a little application that gives you the opportunity to create a menu for CDs you create yourself. In fact you only need to create a text file that mentions the title, path on CD, picture and some other extra's per program / game you place on the CD. If you add the program, a self created text file and optionally an autorun.inf file to the CD, the menu will pop up the minute you insert the CD in a CD-ROM drive.

> Bootable CD-Rom links

[#bootcd]

El Torito Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification v1.0 [http://www.phoenix.com/resources/specs-cdrom.pdf]
Created by Curtis E. Stevens and Stan Merkin.

Cdrecord/Mkisofs [http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html]
Used to build ISO images and to record it to your writer.
Cdrecord/mkisofs by Joerg Schilling.

Making a Bootable Windows 2000 CD with Service Pack Integrated [http://www.bink.nu/Bootcd/default.htm]
Service Packs in Windows 2000 have a new feature to integrate the service pack in the original installation folder (i386) So when you install a Computer with a fresh copy of Windows 2000 it will be directly at the Service Pack level. By Steven Bink.

The 911 Rescue CD [http://www.911cd.net/]
Integrated set of software designed for the emergency situations when the system doesn't function properly or when assembling a new PC and no preinstalled operating systems or software is found.

Bootable CD Utilities by reanimatolog [http://bootcd.narod.ru/]
Bootable CD Wizard, Bootable CD Loader v0.2, Duplicate files linker and more...

How to make a PC-bootable CD by Gigo [http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA004958/bootcd/index_e.html]
It's a bit outdated but contains a lot of info on bootable CD-Roms.

Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ [http://www.cdrfaq.org]
This document attempts to answer Frequently Asked Questions about CD-Recordable technology and related fields. It is a Usenet newsgroup FAQ, updated and posted around the middle of each month. The main foci are explaining CD-R technology, describing hardware and software solutions for creating audio CDs and CD-ROMs, and helping people find solutions to common problems.

Cygwin [http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin]
The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools and utilities for Windows. They function by using the Cygwin library which provides a UNIX-like API on top of the Win32 API.

Microsoft KB Q167685 - How to Create an El Torito Bootable CD-ROM [http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q167685]
Microsoft's "way" to create a bootable CD-Rom.

Booting Windows 9x from CD-Rom [http://www.heise.de/ct/english/99/11/206/]
To start Windows 95 or 98 in GUI mode, it must be installed on a writeable medium. You cannot start Windows from CD.' Similar statements have been published in various PC magazines, and c't has said it, too. The time has come to revise this statement.

Fresh Tortillas and CD-Rom Standards [http://www.cdpage.com/Compact_Disc_Variations/danaboot.html]
What does El Torito specification have to do with Fresh Tortillas?

IsoBuster [http://www.isobuster.com/] lets you explore a CD's File System while by-passing Windows.

French translation of nu2 [http://severinterrier.free.fr/Boot/] created by Severin TERRIER.

> Links to other sites

[#other]

Dll-Downloads.com [http://www.dll-downloads.com]
Having problems with a "Couldn't find ***.dll..." pop-up messages. You can download almost any dll file from this site.

MyBootDisks.com [http://www.mybootdisks.com]
This site features all of the Microsoft DOS, Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000 and XP boot disks and utilities for your download pleasure.

Bootdisk.Com [http://www.bootdisk.com]
Tips, tweaks, files, bootdisks, instructions, utilities, links, patches, updates, and other information for advanced DOS and Windows users.

Ultimate Boot CD [http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/]
Run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on them.

BovisTech site [http://www.bovistech.com]
Lots of tips, tools, utilities, information and drivers. The bootdisks are a bit outdated. Created by Matt Beavis.

Troubleshooting and Configuring Windows 98 [http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/]
Lots of tips, documents, articles, utilities, and information on MS Windows 98. Created by Attila Szabo, a.k.a. 'MrScary'.

Leading Interactive LI Utilities [http://www.linteractive.com/]
Buffer Underrun Error Guide from LI, by Johan Malmberg

> Search the Net

[#search]

Google [http://www.google.com]
World's best Web search engine!

Google Groups [http://groups.google.com]
World's best newsgroup/usenet search engine!

Google image search [http://images.google.com/images]
World's best image search engine!

> Drivers

[#driver]

LSI Logic SCSI adapters [http://www.lsilogic.com/support/index.html] (formerly Symbios)

Adaptec SCSI Host adapters [http://www.adaptec.com/support/overview/scsiha.html]

> Audio

[#audio]

DJ Steff [http://www.djsteff.com/]

KVR-VST [http://www.kvr-vst.com/]
Almost anything audio related, not just plugs

Maz-Sound Tools [http://www.maz-sound.de/]
The best site for sound tools!

VSampler [http://www.vsampler.com/]

Wickednation Productions [http://www.wickednation.com/]

XARC Mastering [http://www.xarcmastering.com/]
The Online Mastering Studio