New list of sites providing Shareware & Freeware as of 2-16-05

Reviewed January 2006 links checked & revised as noted. Dead ones removed. May 2007 not checked.
I found these by searching in Yahoo. I do not have any knowledge of most of these sites.
Use them at your own risk. Be sure to read the warning notice below that I got while searching.

http://www.freeware-guide.com/ only freeware

http://www.download.com/ Old trusted site

http://www.allthesoft.com/

http://www.bluechillies.com/

http://www.popularshareware.com/

http://www.download-store.com/

http://www.service-1.org/

http://www.swiftdownloads.com/

http://www.sharewareconnection.com/

http://www.goldenshareware.com/

http://shareware-catalog.net/

http://www.soft32.com/

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/ Old trusted site

The following notice came up on my computer when I went to the next site

If you're not using Spyware Doctor, you should be.

http://www.softwarediscountsmarket.com/ Not sure I would trust this site
(What I was trying to go to was www.bandwidthsaver.com/ & I got redirected to the above. This is a common scam of the marketing people to buy defunct web addresses & redirect you to their scam site. They even go so far as to make the new description & parts of the site look as if it was still the original site. Clicking on anything on the page causes spyware to enter your computer & many times hijack your home page.

I recently upgraded my Windows to XP Pro SP2 & forgot to reinstall all my protection programs. I was searching for Anniversary humor on the web & hit one of these apparently innocent sites. I got hijacked so bad that my home page only went to their search page, my icons, start menu & windows functions were dead. I could not access my hard drive to start the spyware programs. I could access the web, so I went to these sites & redownloaded the programs: (note: all are free. The few that are truly free without a catch)

Hijack this: http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/ downloads are in the left column. Be sure to read the instructions.
You can wipe out a lot with this program.

Ad-Aware by Lavasoft at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ Ad-Aware personal is all you need & it's free.

Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html Be sure you get the original. There are copycats since the name is generic.

Spyware Doctor: http://www.download.com/3000-8022_4-10293212.html There are benefits to registering & paying. Their home page has details: http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/ click on Purchase in the left column for a list of advantages.
This site has more info about it http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4241.html

You should also lock your home page so noone can reset it.
Get the lock & unlock program here: http://wwatsonweb.co.nz/homepagelock/
In the event any of these sites are not active just search for it by name. In the instance above, the entry somewhere kept changing my home page until I got rid of it.

NOTE: No one of these programs is totally effective by itself. You need all of them. There are commercial programs that claim to do the whole job, but each of the above find different things that the others do not.

I had to make sure the download window did not close so I could check “Open” after download. After reinstalling all 3 & running them, Windows would still freeze up every time I restarted due to some entry in the registry that I was not removing. I then found a new free program called Spyware doctor. That fixed the problem & is now giving me notices like the above that Ad-Aware & Spybot have never done.

More software sites:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/

http://freeware.intrastar.net/ only freeware

http://shareware.best--buy.info/

http://www.any-soft.com/index.html

http://www.millionskies.com/

http://www.download32shop.com/default.htm Jan 2006, this one got redirected.

http://www.alistdownloads.com/index.asp

http://www.sharewarejunkies.com/index.html claim to be the oldest reviewer

http://www.softlandmark.com/ India

http://www.shareware-focus.com/index.html

http://www.softcities.com/

http://www.provantage.com/buy-xsoft-shopping.htm

http://www.softbasket.com/

http://www.software-downloads.net/

http://www.globalshareware.com/

http://winpcsoftware.com/index.php

http://www.fileheaven.com/

http://www.freewarefiles.com/

http://www.daolnwod.com/index.htm

http://www.popularshareware.com/

http://www.softforall.com/

http://www.softwarelab.us/