A lot can go wrong on a computer. As a visitor of Techzle you are of course more or less obliged to solve the problem yourself. Fortunately, there are plenty of free system tools to help diagnose and troubleshoot. NirSoft already has a suite with more than 250 tools ready for you. We look at ten in two parts.
Israeli developer Nir Sofer and his one-man company NirSoft have been designing various system tools for years. He makes them all available free of charge to all interested parties. Since then his collection has grown to more than 250 programs that are usually specifically aimed at a certain part or problem.
You can find them on www.nirsoft.net/utils, neatly divided into sections, such as Password Tools, System Tools, Browser Tools and Network Tools. Most tools are available for Windows 32 bit and 64 bit. So you have to download the correct version for your system. Press Windows key+X and choose System: you read it at System type.
In this article and in the next issue of Computer Idea, we’ll introduce you to ten diverse and useful tools from NirSoft’s toolbox. We first tell you how to download and install the tools separately. We also explain how to call it up from a real suite called NirLauncher.
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Separate installation
The installation of such a tool is not difficult in itself. This is also because it mainly concerns small programs that are almost all portable. Basically, you get the accompanying zip file at the bottom of the download page and extract it via Windows Explorer or with an unzipper as 7-Zip.
In addition, various language files are available for most tools, including Dutch (English). Download the accompanying zip file here as well and move the extracted ini file to the extraction folder of the tool. Then right click on the tool’s exe file, choose Characteristics and remove you on the tab General the checkmark Unblock. If you start the tool now, it should address you in Dutch.
(False alarm
Over the years we have never encountered any problem with NirSoft’s software. But of course it never hurts to send the files to VirusTotal forward. It may happen that VirusTotal or your own antivirus tool raises the alarm, but that’s because some tools need to be able to perform certain system operations to troubleshoot. Mostly password tools, such as Network Password Recovery, suffer from false alerts.
Your browser may even refuse the download because Windows Security detects an alleged threat. If necessary, turn off that security for a while: tap Security in the Windows search bar and launch Windows Security. Select Virus & Threat Protection / Manage Settings and put Real-time protection on from.
If you are unable to start the tool afterwards, start up Windows Security again and look in the quarantine section, where you can To recover indicates that the file is indeed bona fide.
NirLauncher
If, like us, you want to use multiple tools from NirSoft, you may find it more convenient to download them in one go in the form of a real suite. You can find it under the name NirLauncher (only 53 MB unpacked). To unpack this zip archive you need the password nirsoft9876$ required.
This portable suite, which you can easily store on a USB stick, has the advantage that more than two hundred tools are accessible from a graphical interface with thematic sections. A disadvantage is that the tools start up with an English interface by default, unless you have the corresponding initial language files in the subfolder Nirsoft (32bit version) or Nirsoftx64 (64bit version).
The suite also has the Advanced Run. This is useful if you want to give a tool certain parameters or if you want to run it as an administrator, for example. The latter may be desirable in order to be able to use all options of a tool.
Wireless Network Watcher
To an average home network there are a lot of devices nowadays. Think of PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets, printers, a NAS, an IP camera and all kinds of other smart devices. A tool such as Wireless Network Watcher is then quite useful to get a quick overview of all this equipment. Despite the name of the tool, this also works fine for devices that are connected to your network via an Ethernet cable. You will immediately see a list with the device name, manufacturer, IP address and Mac address. Through Options / Advanced Options you can choose the network adapter and specify the ip range within which the tool should scan (for example 192.168.1.100 until 192.168.1.254).
It’s not for nothing that the tool has ‘watcher’ in its name. By default, it scans in the background, but via Advanced Options can you de Scan interval always adjust. This way you can also use the program as a real network guard. still with Advanced Options you can select an audio file that you want to hear as soon as an (unknown) device is detected or as soon as the connection with a device is broken. Place a check next to Activate the beep/tray alert […] if you only want to receive such a notification on the very first detection of a new device. Through Automatically export all items to a file every […] seconds lets you save the results in a txt, csv or html log file on a regular basis.
CurrPorts and IPNetInfo
Does your PC generate a lot of network traffic and do you want to know exactly where that comes from today? Then use the CurrPorts tool. This shows you all network connections of your PC in real time. This is done including the associated process, such as chrome.exe or winword.exe, and the local and remote IP address and port number. To quickly zoom in on processes that effectively establish a connection to an external IP address, click on the column External address, so that the items are sorted by IP address.
If you can’t see the trees through the forest, press the button Advanced Filters and enter the desired filters yourself, such as include:remote:tcp:80 or include:process:outlook.exe. Filtering for network connections of specific applications can also be easier. To do this, you can drag the crosshair icon to the window of the target application(s). Make sure that the button Disable all filters has not been pressed.
If you are using CurrPorts as a real-time monitor, please enable the following Options in: Mark ports of unknown applications, Highlight new/changed ports and Beep at new ports.
If you want to know more about the origin of a connection, make sure you have also started the IPNetInfo tool. In NirLauncher it can be found in the section Internet Related Utilities. Then right-click on an item in CurrPorts and choose IPNetInfo from NirSoft. You will now see all kinds of information (whois query) about who is hiding behind the external IP address.
SmartSniff
You already know which devices generate network traffic and which servers they communicate with, but with SmartSniff you (as an advanced user) can go one step further. This also allows you to view the traffic itself: which data exactly goes through your network adapter? Admittedly, there are more powerful tools than SmartSniff (the free Wireshark, for example, which includes an impressive analytics module for internet protocols, but they are also a lot more complex.
Before you start SmartSniff, which you preferably do as an administrator, you should also install another tool: Win10Pcap. This allows you to pick more data packets. For more information, see www.tiny.cc/pcapguide. Installation is a matter of a few mouse clicks.
Once you have launched SmartSniff, open the menu Options and choose you Capture Options. Select here WinPcap Packet Capture Driver and indicate the desired (active) network adapter. Preferably put a check next to Non-selective mode and with Automatically add SmartSniff to Windows Firewall […]. Confirm with OK.
As soon as you press the green arrow button, SmartSniff will start collecting data packets until you hit the red button Stop capturing presses. The packages appear in chronological order in the top window. At the bottom you will see the content of a selected item. You can also filter the data, both during ‘capturing’ (Options / Capture Filter) as afterwards, in the screen display (Options / Set filter).
ShellExView
When you right-click a folder or file in the explorer, you will notice all kinds of options. Not just from Windows itself, but probably also from external tools you have installed. Handy, but sometimes a bit cluttered or, worse, such functions can lead to delays and instability.
You solve that with ShellExView (in NirLauncher via the section System Utilities). Immediately after booting, you’ll be presented with a whole host of so-called shell extensions. We have more than three hundred. It usually works best when you sort them according to the column Type. Whether you choose Tools / Filter by extension type and you select only the types you are interested in.
You may also find a whole range of items with a pink background color. These are the non-Microsoft extensions and it is especially these that deserve extra attention. Through the menu Tools / Hide all Microsoft extensions by the way, you will only see such items.
Select one or more items and choose Disable selected items if you want to (temporarily) disable it to see if that solves the problem. Don’t do that haphazardly though: in this same context menu you can use Google search […] first request additional feedback, but also the column File name puts you on the trail of what or who.
