Unlike Windows XP and Vista, Windows 7 doesn’t come with classic start menu. If you want to get back the classic start menu in Windows 7, CSMenu helps you.

CSMenu is a freeware and small utility for Windows 7 which allows you to get back the classic start menu in Windows 7. All you need to do is to download and install CSMenu, an icon will be placed in system tray area, which can be used to enable/disable classic start menu and to change language as well.

Note that the free version of CSMenu doesn’t support Windows 7 aero.

Download CSMenu

VideoLAN VLC media player

VLC is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and OGG, as well as for DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

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OpenOffice.org

Equivalent to MS Office, OpenOffice.org includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases, as well as HTML and XML documents. Not only does it let you edit basic documents, such as letters and faxes, it also handles equations and complex and multipart documents with bibliographies, reference tables, and indexes.

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Avira AntiVir Personal Edition

Avira’s AntiVir is one of the best freeware security solutions around the world. Its scans are flexible, allowing users to fully scan both internal and external hard drives, run a preloaded scan or customize a scan.

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Notepad++

Notepad is a Notepad replacement with an eye toward programmers, although it should also appeal to the casual user who wants a cross between Notepad and WordPad. Notepad has some noticeable differences from WordPad. Support for tabs is a key, letting users manage different documents simultaneously.

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K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

With the K-Lite Codec Pack you can play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats. This package is mainly for power users and people who do their own encodings.

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ImgBurn

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application that has several modes, each for performing a different task: Read; Build; Write; Verify; and Discovery. ‘Advanced’ input mode to build mode where you have total control over the layout of the disc and can add new folders, change names etc. and Optional logging when hidden or system files/folders are skipped in Build mode due to the current settings.

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Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player software is a cross-platform browser plug-in that delivers breakthrough web experiences and is installed on more than 98% of Internet-connected desktops. Flash Player 10 introduces 3D effects, custom filters and effects, advanced text support, and more.

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FileZilla

FileZilla is a free & open-source FTP application, is handy if you are looking for a solid tool to handle FTP transfers and don’t want to part with your bucks.

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Firefox

The Firefox Web Browser is the faster, more secure, and fully customizable way to surf the web. Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser. Firefox includes pop-up blocking, tab-browsing, integrated Google search, simplified privacy controls, a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.

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Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the Web faster, safer, and easier. Use one box for everything–type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and Web pages.

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Foxit Reader

To put it gently, Adobe Reader is a real pain in the hindquarters. It’s monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader 3.0 kills the bloat and throws in some useful features, such as multimedia support and content-sharing options, while still allowing you to quickly access your PDFs.

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Universal Extractor

Universal Extractor is a program do to exactly what it says: extract files from any type of archive, whether it’s a simple zip/rar file, an installation program, or even a Windows Installer (.msi) package.

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Unlocker

Ever had such an annoying message given by Windows: Cannot delete file: Access is denied. There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use or the file is in use by another program or user. Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use. Unlocker is the solution.

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Sub Menu Pack

Do you get bored of having to open file options every time you show hidden files or show file extensions. Now you can do it and many option by one click from your mouse by this small tiny tool SubMenu Pack.

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Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller is a freeware innovative uninstall utility much faster than Windows Add/Remove applet. With its advanced and fast algorithm, Revo Uninstaller scans before and after you uninstall an application. After the program’s regular uninstaller runs, you can remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer.

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Flash Get

Flash Get is specifically designed to address two of the biggest problems when downloading files: Speed and management of downloaded files.

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DAEMON Tools Lite

DAEMON Tools is an advanced application for Microsoft Windows which provides one of the best optical media emulation in the industry. With DAEMON Tools you can back up your physical CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray discs into “virtual discs” or so called “disc image” files, which run directly on your hard drive. You can also work with images created by other burning programs! DAEMON Tools supports variety of image types.

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Comodo Firewall

Comodo has merged its antivirus program with Firewall Pro, creating a free security program that aims to be more to more people. Although this may frustrate some users who want only one program or the other, the installer does let you opt out of either of the components.

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CCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner.

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Everything Search Engine

This small software application bypasses Windows search with a lightning quick interface and real-time results for all of the files and folders in your local hard drive or any subsection of it. The software doesn’t do much more than search, but its efficiency, effectiveness, stability, and low system resource usage make it a keeper utility.

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Comodo Backup is an automatic file backup and recovery software. It is a straightforward and powerful utility that allows users to quickly and easily create backup copies of critical files.

Its features include complete file and folder duplication to local/ network drives and FTP servers, intelligent incremental backups, e-mail reporting, extensive report logs, real time backups with ‘synchronization’ mode, advanced rule-based filtering, flexible scheduling of backups, space-saving archiving capabilities, and more.

In addition to the default computer location; you can choose network, FTP or Comodo online storage as your backup destination. Likewise you can also opt for FTP, network or Comodo online storage as your restore paths. You can also password protect the files by entering a password under settings.

Features of Comodo Backup:

• Backup files or folders to anywhere on your computer, network or FTP server
• Quickly restore data with a few clicks
• Fully featured scheduler allows you to run backups at a time that suits you
• Security features include password protection and data encryption
• Send e-mail notifications to one or more users about the status of a backup job
• Save disk space with multiple compression option

Download Comodo Backup

How to create custom sound scheme?

1. Select your sounds.
2. How should they be made: using iFX sound recorder, using audacity, downloading sound from “free sound” site, using other programs/sites, or using available sounds.
3. Convert the files to wave format: using FreeRip (recommended), using Google Audio Converter, or using files already in .wav format.
4. Browse to the files location.
5. Re-name the files.
6. Open Control Panel and open Sounds properties. Browse for your sounds then click Save As and type in your sound scheme name.

Key Features of iFX Seven Sound Creator:

• Uses new V4 base for more automatic sound creation
• Uses new Notification Ares in the Taskbar for Alert, Messages, and Updates
• Added a Check for Update option
• Uses Windows Media Player 12 for sound testing
• Better performance
• Easy to Install With Install shield
• You can use it on windows XP and/or Vista if you don’t have Windows 7

Download iFX Seven Sound Creator

Whenever the picture you selected for background is large, ASE will automatically make the picture smaller.

If you want to switch back to default logon then click on Default background button to change the logon screen background to the default background.

Download Windows 7 Account Screen Editor

Mozilla has released the first beta version of Firefox 3.6 and is available to download. This new version of Firefox comes with several new features such as ability to personalize appearance with a single click.

It is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users.

New Features in Firefox 3.6 Beta 1:

• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Download Firefox 3.6 Beta 1

Fix MSE utility will restore all registry values & service settings to known good defaults, without re-installing MSE. This utility works fine on both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows. It supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. Note that you need to have installed Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 and Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 to run this utility.

All you need to do is to download and extract the file to see Fix MSE folder, double click on Fix MSE.exe file and click on Fix MSE button to fix the errors.

Download Fix MSE Utility

SecureZIP Express is a freeware Zip utility developed by PKWare, the inventor of .Zip format. It allows you to ZIP and UNZIP files to save storage space up to 90%. It can also Encrypt and Decrypt files to protect the files you store or send.It is free for non-commercial use only.

Features of SecureZIP Express:

• Protect your important documents
• Save space on a thumb drive, CD/DVD, or hard drive
• Protect email attachments
• Save storage space on your computer
• Secure your photos

SecureZIP Express does not support email or office integration as featured in paid version, so SecureZIP Express should not be installed over an existing version of SecureZIP or PKZIP.

Download Free Copy of SecureZIP Express

Click on Download Now button and enter your email address. You will then receive the download link to get your free software.

You can also direct download setup installer from here.

USB Safely Remove is a system utility designed for quick and safely stopping USB Flash Drives connected to your computer. It allows you to safely stop and remove USB Flash Drives much faster than using “Safely remove hardware” icon in the system tray.

In addition, it gives an opportunity to hide any device out of sight, to rename devices, to disconnect them with a keyboard shortcut and it displays which program prevent devices from being stopped. It also allows you to manage letters of USB drives: to change drive letters easily, mount drives as NTFS folders and allows to automatically hiding card reader drives which does not contain a media inserted.

This utility will be useful and saves much time for those people who often use more than one USB devices.

It supports Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista & Windows 7 operating systems.

Download USB Safely Remove

Previously, I wrote about PowerSlave and BattCursor tool for laptop battery. Here is one more extremely useful tool Aerofoil which helps you to extend & improve Laptop battery life when you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 as your OS.

Aerofoil is a small tray utility for Windows Vista and Windows 7 to automatically disable the Windows Aero Glass interface, and optionally switch Windows Power Plans, Windows Sidebar and sound off when your notebook computer runs on battery.

Aero Glass is re-enabled on program exit or whenever it is connected to the AC power again. In addition it also provides other useful features such as a quick hibernate shutdown option and manual control of Aero Glass.

Aerofoil will also show whether your system is on battery or AC by the color of the tray icon it has, red is battery and green is AC.

Download Aerofoil