As any one of the two or three Grand Stream Dream blog followers know, I am a deep fan of both Mark Russinovich and his Sysinternals tools as well as Nir Sofer and his NirSoft utility collection.
If I was dropped into a corporate Windows island, Robinson Crusoe style, with only my sysadmin skills and two collections of tools to survive, I would pick theirs.
My USB devices and utility CD’s are loaded with them.
One of these days I’m going to get around to finally posting my most-awesomest creation ever: a dual utility disk with a Windows Live-CD boot disk side coupled with a running system auto-run CD menu of utilities.
In the meantime….. This new find will probably make everyone go crazy with delight. Even it it isn’t “technically” necessary to enjoy these fine tools.
WSCC - Windows System Control Center – (freeware) - KLS Soft
Let me let them explain why it is so cool.
WSCC is a free, portable program that allows you to view, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. WSCC is only an interface, you need to download and install the utilities separately. Alternatively, WSCC can use the http protocol to download and run the programs.
WSCC uses the included WSCC Console to execute command line applications.
WSCC is portable, installation is not required. Extract the content of the downloaded zip archive to any directory on your computer.
This edition of WSCC supports the following utility suites:
- Windows Sysinternals Suite (including support for Sysinternals Live service)
- NirSoft Utilities
So basically you just download the zip file and unpack it. It’s pretty tiny to start out with.
Launch it.
You can configure it to point to the location where you have stored all these tools previously (Sysinternals and Nirsoft), or set it up so it can execute the Sysinternals tools from their Sysinternals Live location on the Web.
When you need a tool, just use one of the many listings to locate the tool you want. Press the button and it runs (assuming it has been download first in the case of Nirsoft). I understand KLS Soft is working on making a Click-to-Launch feature to the NirSoft programs as well for a future version of their tool.
What is really great about this tool is that it provides wonderfully concise descriptions of the tools to assist you with remembering just what utility there is to cover your need.
It also provides a console window to show and execute and special command line arguments if needed. How handy is that?!
It is simply incredibly convenient.
Too bad it won’t automatically download and save to local-disk folders the applications for you, a-la “WGET”. That would be icing on the cake. Especially if there was a version-checking/updating feature as well. That would be wicked!
Alternatives
Want to do it yourself? OK.
Make bookmarks of these links:
NirSoft Utilities Panel - “NirSoft Utilities Panel is an experimental Web page that contains icons with links to all major NirSoft Utilities as exe files. When you move the mouse over the desired icon, you'll see the current version and the last update date of the utility.” Find, click and go.
live.sysinternals.com - “Sysinternals Live is a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as http://live.sysinternals.com/<toolname> or \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname>.”
Updates
These applications have recently been updated by NirSoft and Sysinternals. Descriptions by their authors.
MozillaHistoryView – NirSoft - Version 1.17: MozillaHistoryView now detects any file with .sqlite extension as Firefox 3 filename.
MozillaCookiesView – NirSoft - Version 1.26: Improved the Firefox 3 detection.
MyEventViewer – NirSoft - Version 1.15: Fixed bug: MyEventViewer stopped enumerating the logs when there was an item with very large data. Fixed bug: MyEventViewer failed to display long text/data in the bottom pane. New Option: 'Find By Event Description'. When this option is checked, the find feature also searches inside the description of the event.
AutoRuns for Windows – Sysinternals – Version 9.35: This Autoruns update adds additional autostart locations, including lsastart, s0initialization, savedumpstart, and servicecontrollerstart, and fixes several bugs.
Process Monitor – Sysinternals – Version 2.01: This release fixes several bugs, including compatibility with Windows 2000, excessive exit delays, and adds the new networking events to the filter dialog's operations list.
--Claus V.
4 comments:
Is there a way to download all the Nirsoft utilities at once?
Sysinternals as the Sysinternals Suite but I can't find the equivalent for Nirsoft.
@ Anonymous - No, I am not aware of any "official" NirSoft download collections.
I wish there was one as as well!
You might be able to find some on the Net that others have packaged, but I would be very wary.
I only download apps from their developers' websites directly or from a handful of trusted download mirror sites.
From what I understand, WSCC is working on adding an auto-download feature for NirSoft apps as well for a future version on their program, but nothing definite yet.
Good question and I promise that as soon as I find one is being offered by Nir, I will post right away!
Thank you for your reply.
A program that downloads and installs all NirSoft programs can be found at http://smithii.com/nirsoft_installer
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