NirBlog

New utility in NirSoft collection, ShellMenuNew, allows you to easily disable and enable menu items that are listed under the ‘New’ submenu of Explorer.

Explorer New Submenu

This utility was not specified in the utilities plans for 2010 that I posted a few weeks ago, simply because I created this utility within a few days without planning to create it before.

You can read more about this utility and download it in this ShellMenuNew web page.

ShellMenuNew

2 disk related utilities added to NirSoft in the last week. The first one, DiskCountersView, displays the system counters of each disk drive in your system, including the total number of read/write operations and the total number of read/write bytes. It also displays general drive information, like disk name, partition number, partition location, and so on.

DiskCountersView

The second utility, DiskSmartView, retrieves the S.M.A.R.T information (S.M.A.R.T = Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) from IDE/SATA disks. This information includes the disk model/firmware/serial number, cylinders/heads, power-on hours (POH), internal temperature, disk errors rate, and more. You can use the S.M.A.R.T information retrieved by DiskSmartView to find out whether there is any significant problem in your disk drive.

DiskSmartView

Both utilities are already included in the latest release of NirLauncher package at http://launcher.nirsoft.net

A few months ago, I posted some information about moving to x64 system and explained the problem with creating 64-bit version of OpenedFilesView.
A few users that read my Blog post suggested that I use the trick described in the following  article:  Solving 64-Bit Windows’ “I Only Want Signed Drivers!” Tantrums.
After checking this method, I found out that some information in this article is inaccurate, but in the end I managed to get it work. First, this article suggest to use ‘bcdedit /set testsigning on’ command in order to turn on the mode that allows to load drivers that are not signed by Microsoft. However, this article doesn’t mention that this command takes effect only after system restart.  Also, this article says that I must install the certificate on the computer that I want to load the driver. In fact, I found out that I can load my driver even without installing the certificate, as long as I sign my driver with my dummy signature, and the driver signing test mode is turned on.

Although many users may not want to turn on the driver signing test mode just to use my OpenedFilesView utility, I decided to create unofficial release of OpenFilesView/x64 that can be used when the test mode is on. I also added a few lines of code that automatically offer the user to turn on this test mode when the driver cannot be loaded.

You can download the x64 release of OpenedFilesView from here.

In the first time that you try to run it, OpenedFilesView will ask you if you want to turn on the driver test mode. If you choose ‘Yes’, you’ll have to manually reboot your system in order to start using OpenedFilesView.  After reboot, your system will be loaded in test mode, which allows OpenedFilesView to load the driver and work properly.

Be aware that Windows continue to work in this test mode even after reboot. If you want to turn off this test mode, you can choose ‘Help->Turn Off Test Mode’  in the menu bar of  OpenedFilesView, and then restart the computer.

OpenedFilesView in Windows 7/x64

Each time that you run an application in your system, a Prefetch file (.pf file) which contains information about the files loaded by the application, is created by Windows operating system. The information in the Prefetch file is used for optimizing the loading time of the application in the next time that you run it. These Prefetch files are stored in C:\Windows\Prefetch, starting from Windows XP.
WinPrefetchView is a new utility that allows you to easily watch the content of these .pf files.  By looking in these files, you can learn which files every application is using, and which files are loaded on Windows boot.

For more information about this new utility, click here.

WinPrefetchView

NirLauncher is a package of more than 100 utilities of  NirSoft Web site with a launcher application that allows you to easily find and launch the desired utility or its help file.
A few months ago, I released the first Beta of this package in this Blog, and finally, now NirLauncher has a separated Web site with the latest package available to download.

The Web site address of  NirLauncher Web site is http://launcher.nirsoft.net/

Starting from today, NirLauncher package will also be updated more frequently than before. The latest version and the last update date are automatically displayed in the download page, so you’ll be able to easily see when there is a new package to download.
There is a new update from today, which includes all utilities changes made since the last NirLauncher release and the new FlashCookiesView utility. There is also a small improvement in NirLauncher application – it now allows you to launch the selected utility simply by pressing the Enter key. You can also change the functionality of Enter key in ‘Advanced Options’ window.

NirLauncher Download Page