These packs are good both for beginners and advanced players. They include utilities, graphics packs, and UI improvements and bugfixes (through DFHack).
Maintained by PeridexisErrant
Includes multiple binary patches and Large Address Aware, as well as many useful DFHack plugins and scripts.
Maintained by Fricy
Contains fewer binary patches than the Windows starter pack, but contains most of the same utilities and tilesets.
Maintained by Andrewd18
This is an installer that runs from the command line—it checks for required dependencies and can easily upgrade to newer versions of the starter pack. In addition to DF's requirements, you will need Git and Mercurial, as well as a Java environment for the GUI.