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NirSoft Freeware (2008)
- reificator 8y agoI've seen and used nirsoft products for years, never realized his name was Nir Sofer. What a great name for a software developer.
- onyva 8y agoNir is his first name, Sofer last, which in Hebrew means “writer” (as in scripture etc.)
- stevekemp 8y agoAlmost as good as Mike Rowe .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft
- aidos 8y agoHaha. Never heard about that case. >>> A settlement was eventually reached, with Rowe granting ownership of the domain to Microsoft in exchange for an Xbox and additional compensation.
- digi_owl 8y agoDepending on how many games he later bought for that xbox, MS may well have been the ones that came out on top.
- manifest23 8y agoIt's strange to me that people still remember this. It's been 14 years, but I guess it's nice to be known for something :)
- tombert 8y agoWait...are you the legendary Mike Rowe????
- ShaneOG 8y agoHe is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6074487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6074487
- cheeze 8y agoEvery time I say or hear Microsoft, I think of Mike Rowe Soft in my head. Every single time.
- castlecrasher2 8y agoMnenomic devices are a powerful thing
- khedoros1 8y agoI think the story blew up around the time that I connected with a bunch of Linux-loving friends in college, so in my case, the timing was perfect for memorability. I'll bet that some friends from then would remember it too, if I brought it up.
- fao_ 8y agoHey, it still works: https://MikeRoweSoft.com https://MikeRoweSoft.com
- DEFCON28 8y agoThe name Nir Sofer "ניר סופר" means "Field Scribe" ("nir" also means plowed, but refers to a plowed field, too. Now you know!
- sli 8y agoI agree. His marketing almost writes itself. My parents have been shortening my name to "Code" pretty much since I was born. My friends and coworkers tend get a kick out of it when they realize my name can be shortened that way.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- carapace 8y agoI think it was Ted Nelson who pointed out that Mark Miller's name is his vocation. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_S._Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_S._Miller )
- gowld 8y agoWhat's a miller do?
- carapace 8y agoA miller operates a mill. The joke hinges on the idea of a computer as a "mill" for information, a symbol grinder.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoBabbage called the 'cpu' in the Analytical engine the 'mill'.
- 45h34jh53k4j 8y agoThe NirSoft tools for windows are great! I have used various ones for years -- the SysExporter tool has saved many many hours of time. This lets you export Windows widget labels, so if a dialog has no export, it lets you generate a CSV of the string values. Nir Sofer -- publish a Bitcoin address and ill send you something as a thank you!
- newusertoday 8y agoyou can donate here https://www.nirsoft.net/donate.html https://www.nirsoft.net/donate.html (i am neither user nor affiliated with the site)
- tclancy 8y agoSame here, there are a bunch that make managing a Windows box for development so much easier. Essentially they provide a GUI to whatever mix of registry and binary files that control something normally configured by a text file on other OSes.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kevindong 8y ago> While many software companies create a bloated installation package with size of 1 - 3 MB, the size of single utility in NirSoft is usually less than 100KB. The early 2000s were a different time. While as modern day electron apps are regularly 100+ MB.
- Polarity 8y agoim really fed up with this argument. most "native" apps use big chunks of the platform "frameworks" and are not platform independent, which was introduced by os companies and politics in the first place. most modern apple native apps are the ones that crash the most while electron are stable as fuck.
- babuskov 8y agoI'm curious. If you have 20 electron apps running, does that mean you would have 20 copies of the completely same thing wasting your disk space and RAM? How would that work if all the application developers decided that native sucks and all should use Electron?
- Zekio 8y ago20 electron apps would be 20 copies of mostly the same browser
- pavlov 8y agoYes, that's essentially what happens. And it's a huge waste if you have 20 Electron apps running. Each ships with its own copy of Chromium which is as large as an operating system. I created a proof-of-concept called Electrino that uses the platform native libraries to cut down on app size: https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-with-electrino-c7ffdf1d6297 https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-w... Unfortunately I haven't had the time to work on Electrino due to family, etc. — I wish I did because the need is clearly there.
- ChristianBundy 8y ago
- robochat 8y agoI use the nirSoft CSVFileView utility all of the time. The near instantaneous load time is how computing should be.
- roddds 8y agoNir's utilities and Mark Russinovich's PSTools are usually the first thing I download on a fresh Windows box.
- mehrdadn 8y agoI tried opening a 3M-line (550MB) CSV. It took a couple minutes to get to 1M, and it seems to have an O(n^2) algorithm because it was doing 40k lines/second on my machine and now (after around 1.5M rows) it's doing about 1/10th of that. Memory consumption is at over 2GB for this first half of the file. It's definitely a nice tool, but it's far from instantaneous loading!
- JBiserkov 8y agoWell, it says right there on the page: Known Limitations - CSVFileView cannot load extremely large csv files.
- BlackLotus89 8y agoThe article is from 2008 so maybe a (2008) should be added. Like many of you who commented I used the nirsoft tools without knowing they were created by one man. Kind of impressive there was a time when you only found niersoft tools when searching for password recovery tools
- dang 8y agoIt's up there now. Thanks!
- acqq 8y agoEven if you are familiar with his utilities, note that there are many new ones, as of April 2018: https://blog.nirsoft.net/2018/04/04/result-of-nirsoft-easter-egg-challenge/ https://blog.nirsoft.net/2018/04/04/result-of-nirsoft-easter... Also note the comment of "newusertoday" here.
- kaminskypavel 8y agoA freeware legend!
- banderman 8y agoBig fan of BlueScreenView and WiFiInfoView! Thanks for all the great products.
- kiddico 8y agoOh cool! He makes produkey. I've been using that for years, haven't had much use for it as of late with windows using uefi to store keys. Looks like he updated it since last I checked to support windows 10, but only for certain license types.
- keeganjw 8y agoI've been using ShellExView to get rid of annoying, useless context menus for years. Great stuff!
- maxxxxx 8y agoNirsoft and Sysinternals should be part of Windows. Add Notepad++ and you have a decent OS all of a sudden.
- ProAm 8y agoI thought Sysinternals was acquired by Microsoft?
- reificator 8y agoI can confirm, I downloaded the suite from Microsoft a few weeks ago. Still comes in handy to track down some specific types of bugs.
- cobalt 8y agothey were
- Tushon 8y agoI would guess OP meant "integrated into" rather than acquired by, so that they are available by default rather than having to be installed separately.
- oblio 8y agoParts of them were integrated. Take a look at the Win XP Task Manager and at the Win 10 one.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThey are still way behind ProcExp for example.
- HelloNurse 8y agoA straightforward tool for everyone is not "behind" a comprehensive tool for experts just because it does less. Minimizing the probability of someone using Task Manager to shoot themselves in the foot is probably more challenging than adding an advanced feature to ProcExp.
- snarfy 8y ago> Each time that a popular AntiVirus software begins to detect one of my utilities as Virus or Trojan, my email is flooded with messages from worried people that think my Web site is infected with Viruses. Some of them even blame me that I spread Viruses through my Web site. I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations.
- petecooper 8y ago>I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations. Some (many? most?) will report these applications as 'potentially unwanted applications' (PUAs) and sidestep the issue of blame or malicious intent, often asking the user if they want to proceed rather than just denying access. Source: former Sophos employee.
- CWuestefeld 8y agoMy employer's security team, in their infinite wisdom, is entirely blocking access to the NirSoft site.
- petercooper 8y agoI wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. If that would ever fly, I want to take action against mail servers that tell me my mail is "spam" when it clearly isn't and was double opted-in by their users :-D
- digi_owl 8y agoGoogle seems to have a habit of dumping directly to spam emails from any domain they do not recognize. Or at least i have seen some complaints bouncing around certain mailing lists in that regard.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- woolvalley 8y ago
- gustavorg 8y agoKind of retro site with a @yahoo.com email. Very weird for an advanced IT guy. "searchmyfiles" is awesome, by the way.
- digi_owl 8y agoIf it works, don't fix it.
- bbernoulli 8y agoI tried searchmyfiles, and it's alright, but the best search tool I've found for windows is "Everything" by voidtools ( https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ ) I occasionally use it on a multi TB windows fileserver at work and after it does the initial index (which is really pretty fast because it uses the NTFS journals) searches are pretty much instantaneous. (I also use it at home, it's just less impressive after using it on that many files at work.)
- scholia 8y agoSeconded. Everything is brilliant if you need to find files by name, not contents....
- petecooper 8y agoI've lost count of the number of times I used mailpv.exe to recover clients 'lost' email passwords.
- dec0dedab0de 8y agoI haven't used windows in years, but when I did, downloading all of the nirsoft tools was on my new box checklist. I can't go to the site to see what has been added though, my company proxy has it blocked.
- smhenderson 8y agoHe describes False Positives from antivirus software when scanning his utilities. Do you think your company's proxy blocks the site because of that?
- dec0dedab0de 8y agoThats what I thought at first, but the message says that it was because it was in the "Shareware/Freeware" Category. Which is blocked unless specifically allowed.
- chaoticmass 8y agoHe says all of his time goes into the website and the tools. So I'm wondering, how does he make money? Surely he does some consulting or something on the side to pay the bills.
- masslessness 8y ago"NirSoft is not a full-time job, but I use all my free time to maintain and develop this Web site."
- chaoticmass 8y agoOh, thanks, I misread that.
- mihaifm 8y agoInteresting list, however I feel like a lot of these should be open source, or at least signed with gpg. I read too many cryptocurrency posts these days, they make me paranoid about security...
- zyxzevn 8y agoDo you want to play a game? Speak from command line: https://www.nirsoft.net/articles/speak_from_command_line.html https://www.nirsoft.net/articles/speak_from_command_line.htm...
- themodelplumber 8y agoDoes anybody remember the tiny Windows games that fit in a little window the size of an icon? I remember playing pool and Tetris in a little corner of my screen at a very boring job where I was a couple months ahead of my work. I never did find the game developer after that.
- robin_reala 8y agoThere’s always still Defender: http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/ http://www.p01.org/defender_of_the_favicon/
- CNJ7654 8y agoNirsoft <3
- aerodog 8y ago> The entire Web site and all the utilities that you can find here were developed by me, and only by me. I look at HTML for 2 seconds to find a link to Google Analytics...
- distances 8y agoCollection of visitor information is clearly mentioned in human readable terms at the privacy policy section at the end of the page, which I find refreshingly honest and considerate.
- beloch 8y agoWe should have a sub-thread of these comments devoted just to the silly things people use NirSoft stuff to do. I'll start. ----- I have a HTPC hooked up to a projector that I use to play movies, and the projector has native support for 24 FPS, so I use this: http://nircmd.nirsoft.net/setdisplay.html http://nircmd.nirsoft.net/setdisplay.html to quickly set framerate. Make batch files for 24 Hz, 60 Hz, etc. bind them to keys, and then you don't have to bother going into a display settings GUI.
- csours 8y agoI'd love to have a utility that quickly toggles between two audio outputs in windows.
- voltagex_ 8y agoI could have sworn that's a feature in Windows 10. Edit: nope, but https://soundswitch.aaflalo.me/ https://soundswitch.aaflalo.me/ will do it - never used it though.
- xbkingx 8y agoThere are several, but I haven't used any of them in a while (probably around Win8/8.1. Here are a couple I've used... https://audioswit.ch/er https://audioswit.ch/er https://github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch https://github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch I think there was another that was some variation on "audio" and "switch"/"switcher". You can also create a shortcut to nircmd with the setdefaultsounddevice value set and assign a hotkey for the shortcut. Now I use EarTrumpet, which lists devices in the right click menu.
- zczc 8y agoYou can create a shortcut to C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl,,playback
- kupiakos 8y agoI'm confused why NirSoft software is not open source. I've always seen open source as easier than doing all the work on your own.
- tgtweak 8y agoI've sent a few emails to Nir asking to license a few of his applications, not no replies. Open sourcing the entire thing with both a decent license would be great.
- Mononokay 8y agoI'd imagine it cuts out the donation incentive, along with taking out a lot of the glory for creating items thousands of people use by yourself.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoMaybe he doesn't want all the pull requests, supporting other programmers has a cost.
- myself248 8y agoI can't claim to have used all of Nirsoft's tools, or even half of them, but I've used more than a handful, and they always do exactly what they claim. Quickly, quietly, and compactly. This guy is a personal hero of mine, and I'm proud to say I sent him a few bucks a few years ago to say thanks. I don't know how many others think to do so, but I hope it's a lot of us!
- cup-of-tea 8y ago> Quickly, quietly, and compactly. Just like a good cli tool should. There is currently a disturbing trend of tools coming from certain communities that are extremely noisy with garbage in various colours and even emojis (the community is the Mac community). I can't wait for it to end.
- jggonz 8y agoThese tools made my life so much easier when I worked as Windows System Admin several years ago! Thank you Nir Sofer for your work!!!
- mullikine 8y agoFor over a decade Nir Sofer has enabled kids across the world to take their dreams of breaking into people's computers and make them a reality.
- Havoc 8y ago>But after many users complained about the keys that I added to the Registry How odd...that's literally what the registry is for. One company putting all their sht in one place in a standardized efficient format.
- zoom6628 8y agoHave been using these tools for years. As essential as sysinternals. Would love to see some of his source code from which to learn. Everytime Im in a bind will turn to tools from this site, such as when forgot PST passwords on a 10 year old mail file. The networking and port tools have always been hugely useful. For context I work in a large global ISV, use Windows laptop, and travel often. Having Nir's utilities available has often enabled me to rescue myself from my own mistakes, or resolve things like networking. I too would be very happy if he would put up a donate button!
- acqq 8y agoYou can donate here: https://www.nirsoft.net/donate.html https://www.nirsoft.net/donate.html
- rkagerer 8y agoI love the NirSoft utilities they're great! The kind of OS bundled tools Microsoft should have been making instead of <cough> Media Player and the like.
- distances 8y agoOh man I still remember when Windows Media Player used to be a useful, compact player, and the disappointment when they came out with the skinned abomination. Gave room for MPC and VLC to grow though!
- ravenstine 8y agoThis site was GOD MODE when I was in high school. The tool I used the most was RunAsDate: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html It used to work really well in bypassing software trials. I'm not recommending its use for that(if it even still works).
- crtasm 8y agoThanks for reminding me of that workaround :-) I wonder if I used his tool back in the mid 90s... Ah, can't have been - he says he first put utilities on the web in 2001
- rasz 8y agolifesaver! ThrottleStop devs have a stupid habit of setting 6 month expiry date on every new version, totally offline unfriendly. runasdate was the only option to keep it working on a laptop in remote location.
- spieglt 8y agoLove this site. Helped me often in my first career as a sysadmin and made me want to write freeware.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoAmazing coincidence. I was just introduced to Nir’s tools a few weeks ago. The ones I’ve used are awesome. They are simple and do what they do well!
- dschuetz 8y agoI find it particularly funny that he doesn't explain why his binaries are literally plagued with "false positives". I'm really curious. Does he use some arcane compression techniques which usually are found in virus signatures?
- framp 8y agoI think the issue is that his freeware utilities were used as part of spyware by third parties. AV back in the days were mainly all blacklists of known actors and a few tricks (eg: when the executable was obfuscated with a compressor like UPX or using some more advanced techniques)
- yread 8y agoI love NirSoft utilities as much as anyone, but this isnot right > Anonymous Information Collected on this Website: Anonymous data is recorded on this Web site. Most of the information collected from this website is anonymous information, such as the pages you visit. Other anonymous data I may collect might include the name of your internet service provider, the website that you used to link to my site, the websites that you visit from our site, and your IP address. The data is only used for statistical purposes, but you, as the individual user, remain anonymous. IP address is not anonymous!
- baud147258 8y agoAt least he's upfront that he's keeping info from user connecting to his website. And perhaps at the time when it was written (2008), the author considered that IP was anonymous enough, from his viewpoint, as he couldn't do much with it.
- toephu2 8y agoWow Chromepass actually worked..I didn't even enter my windows admin password or anything.. I thought Chrome encrypts all the saved passwords. How is another program so easily able to read the passwords?
- rasz 8y agoIt does encrypt, using Windows DPAPI :) They are freely available to any program as long as you are logged in, or offline if you know windows/victims password. https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/65qrlb/importing_cookiespasswords_from_vivaldichrome/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/65qrlb/impo...