Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers software updates for Windows, as well as the various Microsoft antivirus products, including Windows Defender and Microsoft Security Essentials. Since its inception, Microsoft has introduced two extensions of the service: Microsoft Update and Windows Update for Business. The former expands the core service to include other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Expression Studio. The latter is available to business editions of Windows 10 and permits postponing updates or receiving updates only after they have undergone rigorous testing.
Virtual PC is a discontinued x86 emulator for PowerPC Mac hosts and Microsoft Windows hosts. It was created by Connectix in 1997 and acquired by Microsoft in 2003. The Mac version was discontinued in 2006 following the Mac transition to Intel, while the Windows version was discontinued in 2011 in favour of Hyper-V.
Norton AntiVirus is an anti-virus or anti-malware software product founded by Peter Norton, developed and distributed by Symantec since 1990 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features included in it are e-mail spam filtering and phishing protection.
Adobe Flash Player is a discontinued computer program for viewing multimedia content, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the Adobe Flash platform. It can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or independently on supported devices. Originally created by FutureWave under the name FutureSplash Player, it was renamed to Macromedia Flash Player after Macromedia acquired FutureWave in 1996. After Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, it was developed and distributed by Adobe as Adobe Flash Player. It is currently developed and distributed by Zhongcheng for users in China, and by Harman International for enterprise users outside of China, in collaboration with Adobe.
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and over the following two months, it was released in stages to business customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released internationally and was made available for purchase and download from the Windows Marketplace; it is the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform.
A system profiler is a program that can provide detailed information about the software installed and hardware attached to a computer. Typically workstations and personal computers have had system profilers as a common feature since the mid-1990s.
CCleaner, developed by Piriform Software, is a utility used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer. It is one of the longest-established system cleaners, first launched in 2004. It was originally developed for Microsoft Windows only, but in 2012, a macOS version was released. An Android version was released in 2014.
Defraggler is a freemium defragmentation utility developed by Piriform Software, which can defragment individual files or groups of files on computer memory systems. Defraggler runs on Microsoft Windows; it has support for all versions since Windows XP. It includes support for both IA-32 and x64 versions of these operating systems.
Piriform Software Ltd. is a British software company based in London, owned since 2017 by Avast which itself became part of Gen Digital in 2022. The company develops cleaning and optimisation tools for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Android operating systems, including CCleaner, CCleaner Browser, Defraggler, Recuva and Speccy. On 22 September 2015, Piriform launched CCleaner Cloud, a tool to maintain computers remotely.
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is a suite of utilities for Microsoft Windows customers who have subscribed to Microsoft Software Assurance program. It aims at bringing easier manageability and monitoring of enterprise desktops, emergency recovery, desktop virtualization and application virtualization.
Internet Explorer 9 or IE9 is the ninth major version of the Internet Explorer web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 14, 2011, as the successor to Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 as a major out-of-band version that was not tied to the release schedule of any particular version of Windows, unlike previous versions. It is the first version of Internet Explorer not to be bundled with a Windows operating system, although some OEMs have installed it with Windows on their PCs. Internet Explorer 9 was the last version to be called Windows Internet Explorer. The software was rebranded simply as Internet Explorer starting with the release of Internet Explorer 10.
UpdateStar is a freeware software application providing update information for approximately 1.3 million software programs. Implementing a social computing aspect, the update database is maintained by the users. UpdateStar uses advertising to refinance the free service and shares ad revenue 50/50 with the software authors via their Share program.
The blue screen of death is a critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems. It indicates a system crash, in which the operating system reaches a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely.
Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a discontinued antivirus software (AV) product that provides protection against different types of malicious software, such as computer viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojan horses. Prior to version 4.5, MSE ran on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, but not on Windows 8 and later versions, which have built-in AV components known as Windows Defender. MSE 4.5 and later versions do not run on Windows XP. The license agreement allows home users and small businesses to install and use the product free of charge.
The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of audio and video codecs for Microsoft Windows DirectShow that enables an operating system and its software to play various audio and video formats generally not supported by the operating system itself. The K-Lite Codec Pack also includes several related tools, including Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), Media Info Lite, and Codec Tweak Tool.
AVG TuneUp, previously called AVG PC Tuneup, and TuneUp Utilities, is a utility software suite for Microsoft Windows designed to help manage, maintain, optimize, configure, and troubleshoot a computer system. It was produced and developed by TuneUp Software GmbH. TuneUp Software was headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, and co-founded by Tibor Schiemann and Christoph Laumann in 1997. In 2011, AVG Technologies acquired TuneUp Software. AVG was then acquired by Avast in 2016 and became a part of larger company Gen Digital in 2022.
This is an incomplete list of software that reads S.M.A.R.T. data from hard drives.
Bodhi Linux is a light-weight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that uses an Enlightenment DR17-based fork called Moksha as its desktop environment. The philosophy for the distribution is to provide a minimal base system so that users can install the software they want. In turn, the distribution only includes software that is essential to most users, such as a file manager (Thunar), a terminal emulator (Terminology), and a web browser. To install additional software, Bodhi Linux developers maintain a browser-based app store that uses apturl to install programs.
Windows 10, a proprietary operating system released by Microsoft in July 2015, has been criticized by reviewers and users. Due to issues mostly about privacy, it has been the subject of a number of negative assessments by various groups.
Windows Update MiniTool is a freeware application client created by a Russian programmer named stupid user, and was released in 2015. It is an alternative to Windows Update for the Microsoft Windows operating systems by allowing users to search, install, postpone, and disable updates.
