Best Windows Freeware

[Mikes2nd]

Ill start it off...

Great painting program...

Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing

[YoshiBishi]

Anti-Spyware

Malwarebytes

[Zaroth]

CCleaner - System/Registry Cleaner - up to 35 pass file deletion/free space wipe

Download CCleaner 3.05.1409 - FileHippo.com

Defraggler - System Defrag

Download Defraggler 2.03.282 - FileHippo.com

Recuva - Deleted file recovery

Download Recuva 1.40.525 - FileHippo.com

Speccy - System information/status

http://filehippo.com/download_speccy/

Pretty much everything Piriform makes is free and amazing. I use these four pretty regularly.

[ictponder]

EAC Exact Audio Copy for making superb copies of your CD media.

LAME Encoder used in conjunction with EAC to encode the media.

Duplicate Image Finder detects duplicate images in a directory allowing you purge numerous unneeded images.

for educational purposes only.

[Goallie11]

CCleaner - System/Registry Cleaner - up to 35 pass file deletion/free space wipe

Download CCleaner 3.05.1409 - FileHippo.com

Great program!

[Mikes2nd]

lets not forget bittorrent

BitTorrent

neowin arcade?
Arcade Classic Arcade Pack 5.0 - Neowin Forums

foxit... I hate anything adobe...
watch it foxit has started installing stuff, make sure you opt out
Foxit Software - Fast, High Quality PDF Software

virtual DJ
http://download.cnet.com/Virtual-DJ/...-10212112.html

[Alan92RTTT]

media monkey - MediaMonkey » Free Media Jukebox, Music Manager, CD Ripper & Converter

[GTOJOE]

Combofix [1st thing I use with virus removal]

Malwarebytes linked above ^^

Also one of the best free antiviruses at the moment is the Microsoft Security Essentials [yes shock horror it's a MS product] It's light weight and not resources hungry. AVG Free has gone down hill and is like 120mb download. MS sec ess is ~10mb and will update with Windows update or on it's own.

[Nytron]

VLC - The only video player you'll ever need, it plays any format you can throw at it without the need for codec packs
mkv2vob - makes .mkv files playable on the PS3
Microsoft Security Essentials - I personally don't use virus protection, but most windows users need it and this is the best one w/o being a resource hog
OpenOffice.org - Microsoft Office alternative, works with .docx
Firefox - Completely crushed IE when it came out, and still does. extensions ftw
Google Chrome - Amazing browser, minimalism ftw
Media Player Classic - Lightweight alternative to vlc, does not play as many formats but is less resource intense. Good for older hardware or if you're trying to play super high def content.
7-zip - like winzip or winrar, but better
ImgBurn - lightweight cd/dvd/hd-dvd/blu-ray burning software
uTorrent - The best torrent client by far
TightVNC - Remote control software, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it

edit: almost forgot, skifree

[GTOJOE]

CCCP Codec Pack Excellent codec pack that also includes Media Player Classic as linked above.