NirBlog

SmartSniff is a TCP/IP sniffer utility that allows you to capture TCP/IP packets on  your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.  By making some changes in the ‘Advanced Options’ window, you can use  SmartSniff as alternative to CurrPorts utility, and only view the general TCP connections activity on your network adapter, without capturing the data.  SmartSniff shows some information that is not available in CurrPorts utility, including number of packets, total transferred data, and current data speed in KB/Sec.

Here’s how to configure SmartSniff to only show general TCP connections activity:

1. Open the ‘Advanced Options’ window (Ctrl+O).
2. Select the ‘Only Display TCP/IP statistics’ option, so SmartSniff won’t create a large capture file.
3. Select the ‘Retrieve process information’ option, so SmartSniff will display the process of every connection, like CurrPorts utility.
4. Select the ‘Display only active connections’, so SmartSniff will automatically remove all closed connections from the list.
5. Click the  ‘Ok’ button in the  ‘Advanced Options’ window. In the main window, Select the ‘Hide Lower Pane’ option under the Options menu. The lower pane is not needed when you don’t capture the TCP data.
6. Start capture (F5) and watch the  TCP connections activity.

From time to time I receive complaints from people who say that my VideoCacheView utility freezes (hangs) completely without even the ability the kill the process. Yesterday I finally found out what is exactly wrong, after this problem also occurred in my own system.

When a Java applet (and possibly some other components) is loaded into a Web page, it may create one or more pipe handles. These pipe handles caused VideoCacheView to hang while scanning the file handles to find the opened temporary .flv files.  So if one or more Web pages with  Java applets were opened when VideoCacheView scanned the .flv files, it switched into a ‘Freeze’ status until these Java Web pages were closed.

The new release of VideoCacheView (1.77) should solve this freeze problem. So if you experienced this problem in the past, you can try to download the new version and check if it solves the problem.

The new version of NirLauncher package (1.10.x) provides to ability to edit the software groups and shortcuts directly inside the NirLauncher application, which is much easier than editing the package file (.nlp) in a text editor.  However,  this feature is still in Beta, and there are some things that you cannot do with it. For example: you cannot change the order of software groups (tabs) and they’ll simply appear in the order that you added them.

Here’s some tips about how to use this edit feature:

• In order to enter into edit mode, go to the Options menu, and check the ‘Edit Mode’ menu item.
• After you switched to edit mode, some editing menu items under the ‘Launcher’ menu will be enabled.
• When you in edit mode, you can double-click on every software icon in order to edit the software information (.exe file, help file, description, and so on)
• In order to add new applications, simply select the desired software group, and then drag one or more .exe files from Explorer into the window of NirLauncher.  The .exe files must be located under the folder/subfolder of the package file, so the path of the .exe file will be relative.
• You can also use the other options under the Launcher menu to add/edit/remove software groups and to delete unwanted software shortcuts.
• Finally, after making your changes, you can use the ‘Save Package’ option in order to save the changes into the package file.
• Be aware that if you switch into another package when you in edit mode, your changes will be lost.

In addition to this editing feature, I also made some performances improvement, especially when loading a software group in the second time. For example: if you click the ‘All Utilities’ tab, and then click another tab, and then click the ‘All Utilities’ tab again. the second  ‘All Utilities’ loading process will be much faster.

Edit software information in NirLauncher

NirLauncher Edit Menu