50 100k Or Less Windows Software Programs
Back in the good old days it was essential to write optimized code so that a program could fit on a disk for easy distribution. Disk back then meant floppy disk and also earlier hard drives which came with capacities of 20 Gigabyte or even less.
Today size does not matter that much anymore, and some developer's seem to take the easy road to provide their users with less optimized programs.
That's not such a big problem on today's computer systems on the other hand who have enough power to handle those programs. But there are many programs out there that provide great functionality and design without going over the board size wise.
This list is dedicated to those programs. It lists 50 software programs for Windows that use 100K or less. Best of all, the programs are functional and should be useful to many Windows users.
100k Or Less Windows Software Programs
Update: All programs have been tested on a Windows 7 Professional test system, and a Windows 10 system. We removed some programs that are no longer available.
- Audioplayer: A fully functional music player that supports MP3, MPGA, WAV, MIDI, AU, WMA and ASF sound files as well as WPL, ASX, WMX, WAX and M3U playlists. Internet media is also supported and no install is required (64K) (homepage)
- Resize Enable: lets you turn usually non-resizeable windows into resizeable windows. (42K) (homepage)
- Picture Watermarker: Picture Watermarker is a simple and user friendly software that allows you to put text or image over your images and brand them. Picture Watermarker will allow you to open any .jpg, .bmp,.jpeg image and add text or image across the image. (16K)(homepage)
- Backup Utility: This program will copy all the files in a certain directory of a specified type into another directory. Effectively, it is a very simple and easy to use backup utility. Backup jobs can be saved, and you can specify restrictions such as file size, date, and type. (40K) (homepage)
- CD Recover: This is a lossy disc copying program. Designed for recovering as much information as possible from a corrupted file. The program is optimized for recovering corrupt video data from CDs. Supports multiple file retrieval methods. Say goodbye to CRC errors at the end of a file copy. (40K) (homepage)
- CPU Speed Adjuster: Ever tried to play an old game, or run an old program on a modern PC? Notice how everything runs way too fast? This program lets you slow down your PC so that you can run all your old programs again at the speed that you require. CPU usage can be limited to within a percentage. (30K) (homepage)
- Hoe Key: Tiny hotkey program, configurable with an .ini file. (26K) (homepage)
- Clipomatic: Clipomatic is a clipboard cache program. It remembers what was copied to the clipboard and allows you to retrieve it, even after you've copied something else to the clipboard. Clipomatic only works with text (96K) (homepage)
- Encopy: This utility is designed for data rescue from damaged mediawhen standard system copy fail, freeze and or reject medium. This software try rescue data from media like these and even in some cases of serious damage might restore data. It is not possible to rescue everything perfectly, but in most cases this way might be useful. (30K) (homepage)
- Roadkil's Undelete: Allows you to undelete files that you have accidentally deleted from your drives. (51K) (homepage)
- Lens: Magnify any portion of the screen while you move the mouse cursor. (6K) (homepage)
- Minute Timer: Minute Timer (MinTimer) is a general-purpose, simple desktop count-down timer and alarm. (39K) (homepage)
- Windows Pinner: This utility allows you to "pin" a window to the top of all other windows.
The idea for this tool arose when I had to do a documentation for some program. Instead of repeatedly switching from one window to the other I thought it helpful to have my word processor staying in front of the other one... (63K) (homepage) - Dir Graph: DirGraph provides a graphical view of the space used by your files and directories. It allows you to navigate around this view - zooming in to see greater detail and zooming out to see the bigger picture. (35K) (homepage)
- Raw Copy: This program copys a disk as a raw image from one drive directly to another. This utility is designed for people who have faulty drive and want to transfer the data directly to another drive without doing a file by file copy. This saves the need for operating system re-installs and allows drives with an unknown file system to be copied (including from console game machines, data recorders, mac etc).(66K) (homepage)
- Roadkil's Disk Speed: Performs disk speed test and provided details about how fast your disks can transfer data. The information provided includes data transfer rate for linear reads, random read transfer rate and the seek time of the drive. (48K) (homepage)
- Disk Wipe:Securely erases the contents of a disk replacing it with random data or leaving the drive completely blank. Numerous passes can be performed to ensure data is totally unrecoverable. Program works on hard and floppy disks aswell as USB/Flash drives. (49K) (homepage)
- File Splitter: FileSplitter is a freeware and open source, no frills tool to split up files into a specified number of chunks. Whether you're on dialup and need to transfer large files over the internet without worrying about timeouts or disconnection; want to send that large presentation or document via email or even put that movie file on rapidshare (11K) (homepage)
- Dead Pixel Buddy: This is a dead pixel test program. It allows you to easily test your LCD screen for dead pixels. (26K) (homepage)
- Pitaschio: Pitaschio is a freeware which makes it convenient to use Microsoft Windows. (61K) (homepage)
- My Uninstaller: MyUninstaller is an alternative utility to the standard Add/Remove applet of Windows operating system. It displays the list of all installed application, and allows you to uninstall an application, delete an uninstall entry, and save the list of all installed applications into a text file or HTML file (45K) (homepage)
- Notify: Runs hidden in the background until it detects any kind of change in a directory it has been told to monitor. When a change occurs (e.g. create, delete, modify a file) it visually alerts the user. Can be used, for example, to detect incoming information over a network or to detect tampering of files. Uses very little memory and practically no CPU time. (15K) (homepage)
- Mail PassView: Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the passwords and other account details (56K) (homepage)
- RegScanner: RegScanner is a small utility that allows you to scan the Registry, find the desired Registry values that match to the specified search criteria, and display them in one list. After finding the Registry values, you can easily jump to the right value in RegEdit, simply by double-clicking the desired Registry item. You can also export the found Registry values into a .reg file that can be used in RegEdit. (52K) (homepage)
- CurrPorts: CurrPorts is network monitoring software that displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer. For each port in the list, information about the process that opened the port is also displayed, including the process name, full path of the process, version information of the process (product name, file description, and so on), the time that the process was created, and the user that created it. (62K) (homepage)
- Dizzy: DIZzy displays DIZ, NFO and other confusing, ASCII-extended text files in a pleasing graphic format. It supports drag-and-drop, file associations and command line. DIZzy is an amazingly small, self-contained, flexible and free program. (8K) (homepage)
- Surecrypt: SureCrypt is an ultra small encryption program designed for fast processing of extremely large files. It can encrypt or decrypt files as fast as Windows Explorer can copy them. SureCrypt presents a flexible user interface with detailed record of all operations. (9K) (homepage)
- Metapad: Once upon a time, one of the most useful programs for everyday use was known as Microsoft Notepad. I realized that Notepad was quite powerful and did a lot of what I wanted in a simple text editor. Yet I found the user interface to be unlike most 32-bit Windows applications and actually quite poor.. (39K) (homepage)
- Capster: Have a program run at the startup of windows, but only if your caps-lock key is down at the time. (5K) (homepage)
- Startup Monitor: StartupMonitor is a small utility that runs transparently (it doesn't even use a tray icon) and notifies you when any program registers itself to run at system startup. It prevents annoying programs from registering themselves behind your back. (60K) (homepage)
- Color Cop: Color Cop is a multi-purpose color picker for web designers and programmers. It features an eyedropper, magnifier, variable magnification levels, 3 by 3 and 5 by 5 average sampling, snap to websafe, color history, and a 42 color complementary palette. (61K) (homepage)
- CPUID: Displays information about your computers processor(s). Speed, cache size, features, clock multipliers, codename, brand plus much more information is displayed. (47K) (homepage)
- Tiny IRC: Are you tired of IRC clients bloated with features you never use? Your search is over! TinyIRC Pro packs the common features you need for day to day IRCing into a small package. If you want to take your IRC client on the road, with TinyIRC Pro its as simple as copying it from your hard disk to a floppy or USB key. (60K) (homepage)
- Kill disk: powerful and compact software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility. (58K) (homepage)
- YourCPL: Some of the items in your Start menu really belong in Control Panel. YourCPL puts them there. Anything you can run from a command line can be added. (6K) (homepage)
- Startup Control Panel: Startup Control Panel is a nifty control panel applet that allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts. It's simple to use and, like all my programs, it's very small and won't burden your system. A valuable tool for system administrators! (34K) (homepage)
- 'Reso: Make a shortcut to run an app at your favorite resolution. (9K) (homepage)
- Emunge: A very simple program designed to take a piece of text from the clipboard or entered into the program's left window pane and perform a series of regular expression search and replace operations, producing the output text in the other window pane. (19K) (homepage)
- Hash: Hash is a small GUI tool designed to perform MD5, SHA1and CRC32 hashing functions on a number of files. The file size and modified date is also optionally shown. Results displayed in the window can easily be copied to the Windows clipboard or saved to a text file. (16K) (homepage)
- Volumouse: Volumouse provides you a quick and easy way to control the sound volume on your system - simply by rolling the wheel of your wheel mouse.
It allows you to define a set of rules for determining when the wheel will be used for changing the sound volume. (51K) (homepage) - File Compare: Compares two folders of files in binary (recursive) to see if they are identical. (41K) (homepage)
- FoldersReport: The FoldersReport utility scans a drive or a base folder that you select, and displays essential information for each folder that it finds: The size of all files inside the folder, The real files size on the disk, number of files inside the folder, number of hidden files, number of compressed files, and number of subfolders. (27K) (homepage)
- Text Merge: Gives the user the ability to easily merge selected text files into a single file. (21K) (homepage)
- Serps Finder: SERPs Finder is a free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) utility that allows you to find rankings of your pages in all major search engines. SERPs Finder can easily check search engine position of your site for a given query in Google, Live Search, and Yahoo! Search. (37K) (homepage)
- TinyResMeter: A small tool that displays useful information about system resources in real time, but it also gives much more detail when you right-click on the displayed fields. (48K) (homepage)
- Mini Explorer: A fast and tiny alternative to Windows Explorer. (36K) (homepage)
- Boss Key: BossKey is a simple virtual desktop program. Create hot-keys to switch between the desktops and have one set of windows/applications on one and a different set of windows/applications on another and flip between them instantly with a single keypress (7K) (homepage)
- Memtest: A thorough, stand alone memory test for x86 architecture computers. (75K) (homepage)
- Win32Pad: Win32Pad is a feature filled text editor that is written with a programmer in mind. Its main purpose is to provide enough functionality that is missing from notepad without sacrificing file size and performance. It's very fast and powerful. This editor is written so that you can install it and start using it. (39K) (homepage)
- Wireless Net View: WirelessNetView is a small utility that runs in the background, and monitor the activity of wireless networks around you. For each detected network, it displays the following information: SSID, Last Signal Quality, Average Signal Quality, Detection Counter, Authentication Algorithm, Cipher Algorithm, MAC Address, RSSI, Channel Frequency, Channel Number, and more. (44K) (homepage)
Summary
Article Name
50 100k Or Less Windows Software Programs
Description
A list of tiny (sub 100 Kilobyte) programs for the Windows operating system that are still compatible with all recent versions of Windows.
Author
Martin Brinkmann
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
Logo
The full quote is:
“The content is not stored or seen by any human unless donated as part of the feedback mechanism.”
How much time before that data collection and processing become consentless, like Microsoft likes to do ?
“Another way you can help refine this feature is to donate your actual emails so we can analyze their contents and improve the quality of suggestions in the future.”
*Pukes*
Am I the only one that wishes that MS would instead focus on fixing some of the more glaring issues with their software before implementing silly new gimmicks like this?
Outlook still loves to hang for several seconds at a time if there’s any issue accessing a mailbox (particularly a problem if you have several mailboxes open, or if your VPN connection temporarily drops). Quite why the server processing seems to share the same thread as the UI is beyond me.
I’m also sick of the recent bug in Outlook that won’t let you attach a document to an e-mail if it is open in another window. Thus forcing me to close the spreadsheet, attach it, then re-open it again. Weirdly, if it is in the “recent” list, it will attach without complaint.
Add onto this the horrible, cluttered interface in Outlook these days (so much white space and other huge elements) that make e-mail navigation a pain on a small screen and I can’t help think that fixing basic issues like these and improving the accessibility of the programs should be a far higher priority than a feature which 99% of people will probably just disable.
I want them to fix Windows 95. Instead, they flounder along with “upgrades” until they realize … oh, look: that “evolved” into an unfixable mess … lets “move on” to make a new shiny OS, and leave another bit of debris and more abandoned users in our wake.
This article is about Open Office, which is not connected to Microsoft.
Open Office is connected to this article about LibreOffice .. unless its about how you shouldn’t use OO..
Good for people who can’t spell This feature could be very annoying.
I will be turning this feature off, when it comes out for Word. I have been typing for decades, and know what I want. Having predictions come up regularly is a real pain and distraction. So I turn them off in email and on my iPhone and iPad.
I agree with Matthew B – after the latest Windows update, Word started doing this and it’s incredibly annoying. I can touch-type so I don’t need the predictions – it creates errors and slows me down.
Thanks Martin. The suggestions were annoying and sometimes inappropriate. I told Microsoft about it. I wanted to disable the suggestions and now I have. Good information.
I see the option in Outlook web and it is turned on, but I see no evidence of it actually working as I type a new email.
and fix the issue of search. search has been about the worst thing MS ever did in Outlook & since moving to the title bar has not improved and the fact default searches now are FROM: is bonkers /rant
this new feature is sh*t; it’s like a rearview camera (actually, its way worse, but the analogy is coming): the machines are taking over our need for intelligent thought.
But honestly, MSFT really ought to run focus groups that include people who have ADHD or photosensitive epilepsy. For us, this attempt to help productivity only significantly decreases it.
(It feels like we are all being treated to a dose of that brainwashing technique you see on the SyFi channel that involves a lot of flashing lights and images)
the worst part about any of this: that our comments, reactions, suggestions, thoughts… are never actually heard or acknowledged by any of these tech companies who just shove new crap onto our corporate PCs and don’t think twice about end user experience.
sorry y’all, rant over. for now.
I absolutely hate this feature. Thank you so much for the how-to to turn it off. Now that you pointed it out, I will know to check the tiny bar in the left corner, but I spent time I shouldn’t have had to trying to turn this feature off before finding your post.
I think “features” like this should be opt-in, not opt out, or should be much easier to find to turn off. And I agree with the suggestions above – there are plenty of other issues Microsoft needs to fix before adding “helpers” like this. One that wasn’t mentioned above – terrible grammar in the suggested grammar fixes. As often as they’re right, they’re wrong. And the database programmers need to learn the use of apostrophes…. Thanks for the rant space. :)
Thank you for posting this where I could find it and use it after an MS Office update today.
Sadly, this nonsense is the same thing I see my company implementing and me coding for them: window-dressing trinkets that are this year’s Christmas toys that everyone needs to be told that they want, while data-integrity code defects go un-addressed because no salesperson can make a commission off of us publishing their correction.
Our society is evolving, and being run by a generation that learned to communicate in broken grammar on their smartphone while nursing a five-second attention span.
They _want_ the machine to think for them. It is so much easier than thinking for one’s self.
Abdication of personal responsibility.
Corporate America is only too willing to step in, for a modest fee and your privacy.
We aren’t going to get Microsoft or anybody else to stop. There’s far too much money to be made at it.
As above, thanks for the rant space.
We will survive this, somehow.
So, Microsoft wants to use what we type to improve AI while charging me a hefty annual price for Office 365 subscriptions. Then someday AI will tell me what to see, think and do and its happening already. Someone needs to get a hold of the monster and put it back in the pit.
How will they profit from improving AI?
Thanks for this article, this behavior started on my machine yesterday no doubt a sneaky effect of an update. It was easy to fix using your instructions, but I suspect Word and Outlook are still “phoning home” everything I type even though the predictive text is shut off.
They think we’re all stupid. They should be paying us.
Thank you for the resourceful article! I looked for the status bar entry, but I couldn’t find it in the web version of Microsoft Word. What I did find, however, was Editor (between Dictate and Designer) above the opened document, and the option to disable suggested text was in there. Scroll down to Text Predictions and click the item’s “button” to turn this annoying feature off. I think Off should be default. I hate when developers set defaults for items they think I need. Adobe is another company that does that when people want or need to download the free or pro version of its Acrobat PDF Reader. I often tell my students to uncheck the boxes next to the McAfee antivirus and Chrome extension options before downloading the reader because they likely do not need them. I think these options should be unchecked by default. Let the consumers make up their own minds.
Thanks so much for telling us how to disable this intrusive feature – predictive text! It’s like having a know-it-all teacher always looking over your shoulder. Very irritating!
I can appreciate why some people would love this feature, and in some cases it makes sense where time is more critical. But it should not be the default.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that the programmers job is made simpler when the human conversation is simpler. Predictive text, if used, limits the conversation to a box only as big as a programmers imagination and literary ambition. I know a lot of programmers. Imagination is not their strong suit – no offense to creative programmers intended. Broadly speaking, to predict the manner in which I prefer to speak would require far more resources than they would ever allocate.
If it were up to me they would go the opposite direction as a software company. I want a far simpler interface with basic editing function and attachments. Anything more than that is a distraction and I can honestly say, totally ignored and certainly a distraction making me wish I wasn’t on outlook.
In the end, I disable nearly every “improvement” Microsoft offers, and check “metered connection” to prevent it’s downloads from happening in the middle of mastering a single for a customer. Of course that is not supposed to happen but we all know how real life works.
Ill pay 5x what they are charging if they strip it down to an OS that works as a background product and doesn’t need the internet and isn’t of bloatware. That OS would be pure gold, worth every penny.
Grateful to have found out how to turn it off. If this is how good AI is supposed to be then we’re in worse trouble than I thought.
Microsoft, and they’re not the only ones guilty of this, need to stop “giving us nice things” without asking us *FIRST* whether we want it or not.
I am sick to death of finding some new app running on my machine that I didn’t see before, didn’t ask for, and didn’t authorize. Then I look up on the web and it’s 15 steps to get rid of it. Christ, it wasn’t hardly ANY steps to get it!!
A true annoyance. I couldn’t believe this feature when it appeared and after tolerating it for a few days I did a ‘net search for disabling it. I’m a writer by trade and living, and this is antithetical to creation, whether fiction or non. In my mind, it reflects the whole dumbing down of this generation – it can give someone the appearance of being articulate, only to discover that they are anything but upon first meeting (or interview). Beware.
Thanks for the tip on how to turn it off, was the first hit when I looked it up. I’m not really willing to slow down and check what suggestions they offer me as someone who can type 115 wpm ?
Predictive text has sprung up on the desktop version and this article does not address that version. There is no “Text Predictions” on the desktop version to turn on or off.
I finally figured out how to turn it back off!! when it starts to add the prediction hover the mouse over the prediction and it will take you to ‘text prediction’ and you can deselect it.
Why ANYONE would want this is a question that boggles the mind.
It is VERY clear to me that every time the programmers have some lovely little hack they like, they are convinced ALL of us would like them. Not. I’m with what Bill said last July – I would pay a HUGE amount for a version of Word that would just stay the same and do what I want and that doesn’t have a bunch of bells and whistles that aren’t necessary. Please!!!!
Thank you!! I looked in vain in the too-full and too-many “Options” screens for a way to turn off this annoyance.
I wish there was a Notepad-on-caffine mode — not the wannabe one-size-fits-all unstable multimedia-editor-on-crack mode that might change erratically from day to day.
There are too many bells and whistles in Word. Remember WordPerfect? It behaved like traditional software: Do this until I tell you to do otherwise — and the current settings were visible in an optional “codes” pane. Instead, Word buries formatting, styles and who knows what else in the paragraph marker. If I want to change the format of something, it may presume to change all similar items in both directions in the document. Feh!!!
Back to your excellent post: thank you for letting know how turn off this unwanted “help” from the presumptuous twenty-somethings at M$.
The status bar toggle removes the annoyance in the current document, but it may be baaaack in a new document.
There is perhaps a more permanent way to dispose of this annoyance:
In the “File” menu, choose “Options”
Then in “Advanced” pane (listed at the left of the options), navigate to the “Editing options” section.
In that long list of micro-text, uncheck the box “Show text predications while typing.”
My hope is that this will get rid of “just one of the intrusive PITAs.”
The navigation above is for Word in Microsoft 365 Apps running on a desktop machine.
YMMV in other versions, and these instructions may be broken when M$ spews another “upgrade” of the version I am using on this machine.
Just noticed this was turned on, presumably by business IT admin. It’s atrocious, not at all usable, like Google’s is. Instead of accepting my typed words, it refused to allow me to add a space between words as I typed, instead waiting for me to accept or reject the suggested words. So unintuitive it’s not funny. Turned it off immediately.
You need to *right* click on the thingy in the status bar; left click brings up the Options dialog, and if this predictive typing thing is on the options dlg, I sure can’t find it. Right click brings up a long, unorganized (afaict) list of options that you can check or un-check, and somewhere in that long list is predictive typing.
I’m not sure how you’d turn predictive completion back on if you decided you want it, but that’s someone else’s problem.
Now if they’d only fix automatic number, which has been broken in every version of Word I’ve ever used.
The abruptness of it popping up and diverting my attention from my flow of thoughts is very distracting. I tried it for a short while and quickly decided it was slowing me down, making me stutter in my thoughts, and just generally getting in my way. I type plenty fast on a PC. Now on current phones with screen typing that is slow and prone to typos, yeah, you might want some predictive stuff to survive there. But I still do not want anybody snooping my info, so there is that.
How are you suppose to read this article when the adds are constantly popping up where I am reading and no matter how many times I knock them down, they return with the same message. Most times with a video that is over what i was reading. I am certain this article was helpful but I will never know because I got fed up with the ads that were trying to pull me away. One just popped up here because I am telling you about it.
What’s up with this place? All I can see in the comment sections of new articles are VERY OLD (as in several years) comments.
And my comment, posted in one article, is posted in a completly different one…
Very strange. This is the second time this week where there is a disconnect between the article and its comments!
I have had LibreOffice 7.6 for over a week. The only fault that I can find is that the help function still does not work in Ubuntu. It tries to find a web page that does not exist. This occurs in both the menu function of help and pressing F1.
I found this in earlier versions of 7.x, and reported it, but was brushed off.
I think it works in Windows, but I am not sure.
Did you download and install the separate optional help package, that does not come with the base package ? If not, I wouldn’t wonder.
Interesting. Article about Libre Office, but comments on MS and Word, dating back to sometime in 2021. Who’s in charge here?
LibreOffice is great. Some of our customers are still using outdated MS Office versions. With there okay, we install it and set the saved file formats to MS, Writer font as Calibri. About 90% still use it years later. The ones that don’t typically require Microsoft 365 for work.
Notepad2 is all I find myself using these days.
Notepad ? Why don’t you use Vi ? (well or Vim if necessary)
Notepad as nearly as terrible and unnecessarily feature-bloated as Emacs.
But if you are truly hardcore, you’d use ed or edlin and nothing else.
No, not Notepad, Notepad2, which is a completely different application. On top of that Notepad2 is a Windows only application, so mentioning Linux text editors like Vi(m), Emacs, ed and edlin does not really make sense.
In the past I didn’t like LibreIffice but after they improved a few things in 7.4 and 7.5 I actually like it and use it. Mostly Writer. In terms of features it is much better than any other software of this kind except MS Office. In terms of customization it seems the best. Guys who prefer minimalism may use OnlyOffice, but work is way more comfortable and productive in LibreOffice. As for questionable improvements, Libre gets them but as long as I can turn new features off I don’t really mind.
Comments are broken or something. Oldest is from February 22, 2021. :S
And the MAIN PROBLEM is that the software is not working, my intention was that I would download a video from a specific website and it worked, but when I tried to get another video, it stoppend to work and it is not working at all, Would you have any idea, what a mistake I am doing . Thanks