Hmmm...I never thought of shareware. But then, some days, my brain just doesn't want to work! Thanks.
But isn't there a risk of viruses on those sites?
What you do is go to a site where they post the number of downloads of that software.
Pick one rated highly and downloaded often, that would be the most reliable and functionable.
You should also be running the free zone alarm firewall, it would tell you right away if something got in because Zone Alarm would report to you in a pop-up window that a program is trying to access the net.
What you do THEN is to say NO to Zone Alarm, note the file attempting the access.
Close it if it is running under processes, do a one day search of new files with the search function and delete it or others.
This is worth you and others copying and pasting to a word file for future reference.