At my last job some busybodies started inspecting whether or not we have correct licenses for everything we use and explicitly deleted IrfanView from peoples' computers because they didn't. When word got around, actually went out and bought IrfanView license just for the "not gonna let you do that" moment. It's damn useful, and I've been using it for over a decade now on every Windows machine I had. Before that, I remember using something called "ACDSee", but they must have made the software worse in important ways, because I eventually switched to Irfan.

If you want to support it, and dislike PayPal, you can pay for it on the Windows Store.