NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#2NirLauncher is a portable software package containing over 200 of these utilities. https://launcher.nirsoft.net/
And here's the top 10, sorted by downloads https://www.nirsoft.net/top_utilities_downloads.html
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#3Only for Windows, right?
Even so, it’s still a pretty cool list. Congratulations to the author!
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#4I love these tools, but my one "complaint" is that they're not open source.
I often find myself searching "how to find X in Windows", and the answer is to run one of these tools. But what I really want to know is how the tool does it.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#5I used these for years. Especially the Windows handles checker I found incredibly useful.
That being said: When I recently recommended it to a friend he complained about virus scanner warnings. When we ran the tool through Virus Total we had a considerable amount of warnings and these were not only from the heuristic checkers.
I have considerable trust in Nirsoft and maybe these warnings are wrong but on the other hand I have confidence in Virus Total too.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#6My favorite part of the NirSoft website is the antivirus issues section of his blog.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#7I love these tools, but my one "complaint" is that they're not open source. I often find myself searching "how to find X in Windows", and the answer is to run one of these tools. But what I really want to know is how the tool does it.
Why would you want source code for that? WinAPI is visible in dependency viewers. File system operations visible in process monitor. Same with registry access. WMI queries are visible in event viewer (simple setup is required). Network activity is visible in sniffers.
Even when source code is available, these tools are both easier to use (reading source code can be very time consuming for large projects), and they give more accurate results.
By the way, sometimes I use these tools when I debug or troubleshoot my own software.
Source code only helps for simple programs. For sufficiently complex software, looking at source code increases development time instead of helping.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#8I used these for years. Especially the Windows handles checker I found incredibly useful. That being said: When I recently recommended it to a friend he complained about virus scanner warnings. When we ran the tool through Virus Total we had a considerable amount of warnings and these were not only from the heuristic checkers. I have considerable trust in Nirsoft and maybe these warnings are wrong but on the other ha…
I've seen virus alerts for programs that I have written and compiled myself so many times that I don't trust antivirus by default. There are a number of API calls that trigger the alerts without further consideration.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#9I used these for years. Especially the Windows handles checker I found incredibly useful. That being said: When I recently recommended it to a friend he complained about virus scanner warnings. When we ran the tool through Virus Total we had a considerable amount of warnings and these were not only from the heuristic checkers. I have considerable trust in Nirsoft and maybe these warnings are wrong but on the other ha…
They have a section on their Website about the AV issues.
Re: NirSoft, a collection of small and useful freeware utilities
#10Another discussion from about a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851021.