How to use a chess engine?

I want to use houdini 1.5 engine for analyzing some things, but i don't know how to use it. I heard that i need to have some kind of a proggram to run it, like arena, but the site is not available for some reason.

Is there any other proggram that i can use? How to install the engine on the proggram?

I don't have the slightest clue but I thought I would bump this for you. There are so many silly threads that get attention, I feel like this one deserves at least some...

Barely able to find the power switch, so no expert here, just an old patzer trying to help.  What you need in addition to the engine is a GUI, graphic user interface.  Arena is a good free one, so is SCID v. PC or so I've read.  You can download them from this site (last item under "more").

I say why bother.  Fritz comes out with a new version every year or so and the old ones are available cheap.  I did a quick Amazon search and found Fritz 12 available for $10.  Yes Fritz is a pain to use but there's a steep learning curve for virtually any sophisticated program.  And yes Fritz 12 will run Houdini 1.5a; it's one of the many programs I've tried.  Good luck!

I used Arena a few years ago and switched to SCID, because it seemed like a leaner, more intuitive program. I upgraded SCID a few weeks ago and my computer locks up when running houdini now (and I don't have a shitty PC exactly, core i7 processor, 8 gb ram, not top of the line, but it can handle a chess engine). Im switching back to Arena.

winboard is another good one....it is also free.

stockfish 7 is the best after comodo 9

In this moment Stockfish is First in CCRL Rating List. What is the best is a matter of taste. 

For use a chess engine you normally (you can run the engine in a terminal but this is unpractical) need:

a program to use the interface with the board (Scid and Arena are free I prefer Scid) http://scid.sourceforge.net/ (In a car this is the bodywork)

and a chess engine (I recomend stockfish 7) https://stockfishchess.org/ (In a car this is the engine)

You can Use a database to load as a tree or as a database to search games ( I recomend Icofy database but the server is dead. In chess.com I find a copy in the following link. In a car this is the GPS XD) 

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/icofy-chess-database---where