dman

Care to elaborate on this, Zxian?

I think Europeans are wise to be skeptical of this. In America we were promised many of the same benefits touted by EU supporters with our North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). What we got was outsourced jobs (almost impossible to get work as programmer) and a flood of illegal immigrants. I have nothing against free markets and fair competition, but that's not what we have. Think long and hard before surrendering any of your sovereignty to a “quasi-governmental” body run by bureaucrats.

All of the great progs listed here are proof that there is enough good freeware out there that you dont have to BUY or STEAL software to get a really nice system.

yeah, Cygwin. Great *NIX on Windows implementation, and essential for one of best freeware disk tools, TestDisk

@TBM, WoW!, Your post sets the standard! Great list (can't even call it a list, more like a guide). You spent a lot of time on this with the links and your comments. Much appreciated. Only thing I don't like about it is it makes my original post look cheesy by comparison I think I will try to clean it up and emulate your style.

Try html help sdk from ms http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....conHH1Start.asp not sure exactly how to embed executable content, never tried it. I know you can launch external programs though, and I believe there is way to embed.

@Fred, lleo That's what I'm talking about. Nice lists! I like your scripts too, fred. I think a lot of people don't realize the power that comes pre-installed on every windows machine if you know how to unleash it.

Foxit is nice prog, no doubt. Perfect for "hardware challenged" machines. I did not care for adobe5 and 6 because of annoying splash and slow load. v7 is very nice, however. no splash and very quick load (no, maybe not as fast as foxit).

They are called "switches". they control the behavior of the program in question. type the name of the program followed by "/?" to see what they do

Thanks for great links, TBM. The dbPowerAmp is cool. Yeah, a "totally freeware machine" would not include MS OS, but then again it wouldn't belong on a MSFN forum either.

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Person...ubj=dl&tag=top5

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...B;en-us;310618& BTW, there is also "makecab.exe" already in system32 folder

Tarun is the expert at this and will probably make better reply when he goes online. In the meantime, try pasting your log here: http://www.hijackthis.de/en It looks like you have a few nasties.

Someone listed it now! Thanks Clavicle. What else would you put on your machine if you were only using freeware??

Yeah, I'm not too savvy either. I can make little command-line utils and API-wrapper dll's to use in VFP and VB, but thats about it. Never made a C++ GUI app. The apps that I manage to sell are all one-off or very limited distribution database front ends and data aggregator/processor middleware. Doesn't pay for me to do this with anything but VFP or maybe VB if customer insists. C++ creates the best performing apps, but take 10 times longer to develop and nobody is willing to pay for that if they are only buying a few installations. Anyway, You won't need it unless people start bringing robo-pooch in for a checkup.

There is no spyware in FDM and it has always worked well for me, but then again I never tried to download 1000 files at a time. FreshDownload is also good. Used to use that before I found FDM. http://www.freshdevices.com/ What is OSS?

You must have been using Office Outlook if you have .pst file. In Outlook Express "import", make sure you choose "Outlook", not "Outlook Express". I know this works when Office Outlook is installed on the computer, but not sure if you can browse to the .pst file if it is not installed. If not you may need to install Office Outlook. That will import it for sure. Be sure to make a backup copy of .pst file!!! should have said that first.

First do a search for "*.lnk" and see if you can find them. They may just need to be moved from the original users profile to the new one.

Yeah, there have been some nice suggestions made. I have picked up a few things from the replys, thanks everyone. But I was really hoping that people would list all of the programs they would load to make a totally freeware machine. (like the thread title says). But hey, I will take every little nugget of info anyone wants to share.

Are we talking about Outlook Express or MS Office Outlook? Outlook Express has files named Inbox, outbox, sent items, etc. with ".dbx" extension. Outlook has ".pst" extension. Did you use MS Office Outlook on your old computer and now are using Outlook Express? If you formerly used Office Outlook, choose import/outlook and point it towards the folder your .pst file is in.

@Brando, sorry, my c++ is a little rusty. Forgot to remove debug symbols. I reposted the "release" build. Should not have this problem anymore. edit: If anyone has tried this please let me know how it works for you.

if using xp your mail and stuff is in this folder. <drive>:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{<long random characters guid>}\Microsoft\Outlook Express in outlook express: file / import / messages / microsoft outlook express 6 / Import mail from oe6 store directory / browse to folder above and import the mail. win98 is under windows\application data\identities

Yes to 1 , 2, 3 & 5 Still Prefer VFP to any of them. Currently using VFP7, but thinking of upgrading to v9.

You would be better off showing him what firewall does and how to monitor it so he can prove to himself there is noone in his files. I know this type, and if you don't set him straight soon he will be opening the case or reformatting the drive or some other irrational act.

No, you need an OS to run a browser. For an old machine use win98, or if you don't have windows use a "light" linux distro like PuppyLinux http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ You need some kind of OS though.