This is the ONLY codec type appliance you will need.
Forget about all of those codec incompatibility problems and forever wondering what you need to play a film you downloaded and it has no sound or the picture is bad or not working. Ffdshow will play just about anything and it allows it to be played in your favourite player too.
I recommend Media Player Classic which works really well with it but all players I have tried work with it. Your worst one would have to be windows media player.
Highly recommended software and being updated all the time...just keeps improving!

Just a comment on the other review... @bobad
'Too bad the "portable" version doesn't register file types and shell extensions on launch'
You don't get what it means to have a 'portable app' then if you say that?!
It isn't just about being able to take the app from one PC to another but also, the ability to use an app WITHOUT it integrating itself into the host system and possibly ruining file associations etc that are already in place for that system!
This is the exact reason I came looking for the portable version. I am not using my own PC right now but I do not want to keep using the crap archiver my parents PC has. they don't want to change the way their system is set up so...I find this program and it does exactly as it promises!
So my conclusion is, against what you claim: this is MUCH MORE portable than the original version of course and comes highly recommended.

This is NOT freeware. Upon starting it has a dialogue requesting your name and registration code. It has a BUY button at the bottom...

The nag screen in this software apparently prompts you to join the message board or you cannot use it any longer. Someone was in the forums here thinking that softpedia had some strange policy on their software. Just wanted to let people know that the message board in question is a different one and nothing to do with the forums here. It is just the software authors way of making you pay I suppose. Join their forums and get the program free.
Sounds like a great deal but I'd rather not myself.

Adware? So if a software author tries to actually EARN a little back by giving you the OPTION to install commission supported ebay searches, which you either tick 'YES, INSTALL' or 'NO DO NOT INSTALL' when you get the software, then that means suddenly they are BAD and the software is rubbished??
this guy calling the software adware has no clue about using a PC> Any fool can see to choose NOt to install the ebay search thing if they want. this idiot must have just clicked and clicked and reads nothing. (It is not as if it is hidden...the installer CLEARLY has a picture of the ebay thing at the start with the question for you to choose!)
Anyway, about the software..this really is one of the best there is and it's free which makes it briliant in my opinion.
You can view images with lightning speed, crop, resize, rearrange, move, copy, create slideshows into screensaver or exe formats, view just about EVERY multimedia filetype including movie and mmusic files, there are so many features...too many to list. even if, like me, you just want a program that will open your images when you click them and let you do a resize and a crop here and there then this will fill the gap that windows creates.
download it!
;)

This really is an amazing piece of kit. How to get so many features into a 550k program?
Wow.
You have all of the features of many bulky and less useful web server progams built in to this great little server. I say little but that only applies to two things really: the actual filesize and the memory footprint. both are really small and yet the program is huge! You can do everything you need to do with a fileserver with HFS.
Look no further for the best http server. Believe me, I looked and tried lots before this one but my search is over.
If you have any troubles with your router and cannot get the access for people then simply go to portforwarding.com and this program is feature dthere with full instructions for setting it up with your router too!
How simple do you want it?
I use this as a simple way of sending and receiving files from friends and family as it sure beats using some crap like a messaging program. Plus the passworde accounts are secure enough and it gives me no problems. Ever.

I cannot coment on the program yet for the following reason:
the installer is one of those ancient ones that shows you a full screen with a little box that you need to click to 'update system files' and you can see it extracting VBRuntime6 files all over the place. I know XP is supposedly able to deal with these 'multiple runtime file installs' by using something called sidebyside where it installs them side by side and uses them for the program that installed them however, like many windows 'features', it doesn't always work and too many times crappy installers like this that just blindly fill your system folders with outdated files, have caused me irritating problems!!
I will create a hard drive image first and then instal this to see i fmy fears are unfounded. If there is no update to this review then you can assume the program was not worth saying anything more about!

Sup3rkirby - Get over yourself you sad, sad little person!
Feel free to upload a great and simple crash any PC program that you wrote won't you!
This is a pramk program...don't get so silly about it. So it didn't work...oh dearie me.

If you need this, then you need it!
Nothing does the job better!
You might want to grab the FLAC Frontend to give you a GUI to help you windows oneclick merchants that won't use commandline tools.
Either way, however you use it, this is a great bit of kit!

This is OK if you just want to verify the checksum of files but top be honest it is painfully feature-less.
Just a dialogue box with the browse for file button and then check verification of md5.
If you only need this amount of features then go for it.
I need something that at least tells me what is going on.

Great software, checks and creates these verification files easily..SFV AND MD5.
However!
I really get annoyed when software puts itself as a shell extension, IE: in the right click menu of windows explorer.
This has no way or option to disable this function so for that reason I would say try something else. My right click menu is big enough thanks to this kind of crap programming!

I wanted a way of cataloguing my discs and also possibly searching the indexed files on my HD.
this program does all of those things and also allows you to search your burned files to locate which disc the file is on.
However, its indexing seems awfully slow, it has barely any features apart from the basic ability and also the main gripe I had, the search engine is rubbish. I tried searching for the word 'Marley' as I have loads of MP3 with this in the name as well as folders named similarly. The results were just two files?!
I tried changing it but all I got was either no results or two files.
I deleted the program.

I love this. It is one of those programs that you don't need until you really need it if you know what I mean!
When you need it, there is no other as good.
I recently discovered something it is really useful for.
the freebie giveaways at a certain giveaway of the erm, day, website lets you install a program only on the day they give it away. However if you search the registry for the program name or creators name this little utility often finds even the most well hidden registration keys and takes you right to them. Then it is a simple matter of exporting said registry keys and saving the info as a means of re registering the software for a back up!
This program is great!!

'Limitations:

· The trial version will not show the decrypted password'
WHAT???
The trial won't even give you one single use???
Not that I need it anyway as there are are hundred or more so called asterisk removers for hidden passwords.
I really wonder what the point of this software is anyway...surely if you have ftp sites in your software then you know the passwords?
And if you forget them you are an idiot.
I rest my case.
!

To the user who says this is ROGUE and SPYWARE...it is not:
from the site you referenced it says this now:
'Note on RemoveIt Pro: RemoveIt Pro was listed on this page because of concerns with false positives. Testing with the latest version of RemoveIt Pro indicates that the problems with earlier versions have been satisfactorily resolved. Thus, we can no longer consider RemoveIt Pro to be "rogue/suspect" anti-spyware.
[A: 5-24-06 / U: 8-1-06]
'
Anyway that doesn't change the fact that, as someone says already, this program is pretty bad. not really much use in my opinion. Better off trying just about any other freeware virus scanner. you could do a million times better just by downloading the free 'stinger' software that macafee give away which detects and cleans the most common viruses.

This product has consistently been of a high standard.
I was a bit miffed to see that I had to download almost 300MB this time around when I do not even need half of the updates included!
Anyway, they have changed the software a bit but it still does the same job for me...updates my XP PC without having to deal with crappy M$ websites!
Recommended.

I tried a few programs of this type and settled on one called Desktop Resetter.
That worked great until I bought a connector for my TV so that I could watch TV straight from my PC!
The way my graphics card was, it required me to change the desktop resolution before switching over to TV.
Every time I changed the res' back again the desktop icons would be all over the place, as expected.
I would use Desktop resetter and....nothing would happen!
I tested it all different ways and it just could not hande this.
Then I was on a mission to find one that worked.
Amazingly, most programs of this kind have that same problem.
I figured it out that it is something to do with the way they store the icons positions info...in the windows registry.
This progrsam however, does not.
so even if you got a corrupted registry (who hasn't ever had one!!) then this little program will not be affected as you can save the icon positions to a file and keep it safe.
I contacted the author with some wishlist and he wants to update and implement some ideas into it also like a commandline switch for quick use and exit, amongst other things.
All in all a BRILLIANT program and a friendly author too into the bargain!

I have around 5,500 favourites all scattered in various folders all over the place with very little categorization! So I set about tryoing lots of different URL sorting softwares. There are quite a lot to try and, unfortunately, lots of them are just plain crap or don't have the features that you might think are obvious.
I decided to keep using this program for now and it has been a few months so far.
It is good, the interface is definitely user friendly but this program, even with the frequent updates and bugfixes, does tend to crash on certain tasks (like importing or exporting the complete set of bookmarks) and seems to suffer from an instability issue.
I wish they could sort that out.
Apart from this it is very good.

This program is amazing. Very very easy to use. You simply type in a word and hit search. It finds all files containing that word. Also can use AND, OR etc like any search engine.
The speed at which it creates an index/cache of your hard drive files is quite stunning!
It indexed my total 600Gb of data drives in less than a minute! I only let it index once every few days or so, so no resource usage at all unless you are using it. Oh and the search is always TOTALLY INSTANT when you hit search because it is searching its own index and not your actual hard drive.
HIGHLY recommended!

OK I know it is a joke program but erm...aren't jokes supposed to be funny?!
Anyway it really does strike me as very odd that someone who obviously can code a program, would do this and yet the resulting joke program has a bout 30seconds of fun and that is it. In a nutshell all it does is open your CD tray.
Very strange and note of warning - It installs the VisualBasic runtimes for VB6 without giving you the option. I know that on older than XP versions of windows, this can cause a load of errors and problems after a reboot with conflicts of file versions.
You have been warned!

Seems like it does exactly what I want it to...just as advertised as they say!
Windows should have this already...MS always seemed to have missed the most useful utilities on their bloated OS!
If you want to know sizes of folders quickly then get this. Great little addon!

If more people used this browser less of them would end up with a PC filled with spyware and rubbish. To be able to simply turn off javascripting and other active webpage tat, is a great feature. I know these other browser frontends have this too but wait a minute, this is FREE and it really is the BEST out of them all. I have tried them all over the years and always come back to this one because it is so simple and user friendly and has a bunch of brilliant features to make browsing the web and enjoyable experience. Also it really is VERY STABLE indeed. My experience of similar programs is one of constant crashing or other bugs/pproblems.
Get GB...you can't go wrong!