NirBlog

Starting from the new version of Firefox (3.6.4), all  flash objects displayed on a Web site are now loaded inside a separated process (plugin-container.exe), instead of the Firefox process itself. This change is welcomed, because when there is a crash inside a flash object (video, game, advertising, or anything else), it won’t take down Firefox.

This change also caused VideoCacheView to stop working with the temporary flash video files created by Firefox, because VideoCacheView failed to detect the new process. But… This problem is already fixed on version 1.71 of VideoCacheView. So if you got the new version of Firefox (3.6.4), you should also get the latest version of VideoCacheView.

Firefox plugin-container.exe in Process Explorer

Around 8 years ago, I released a utility named ‘FileDate Changer’, which allowed the users to modify the date and time of every file in Windows operating system.  However, this utility has not been updated for very long time and it doesn’t fit the current NirSoft standards.

A new utility named BulkFileChanger is a replacement for my old ‘FileDate Changer’ utility. BulkFileChanger also provides more features than the old tool, including the ability to change the date or time separately (For example, you can set the file time as 09:12:15, but without changing the existing date), add or subtract seconds/minutes/hours/days from the existing file time, change file attributes, and the ability to add files by path and wildcard.

It’s possible that more useful features, like renaming multiple files, will be added in the future versions of BulkFileChanger.

BulkFileChanger

A few years ago, I released a small tool known as “NK2View” that allows the users to view the content of MS-Outlook AutoComplete file (the file with .nk2 extension) , which contains hundreds of  names and emails that the user send them one or more messages.

After releasing NK2View, I received many requests to add delete/edit features into NK2View and thus I added ‘Delete’ and ‘Add From Address Book’ options into this tool. However, these editing features were very limited and also didn’t work well in some NK2 files.  The limitations and problems with Nk2View led me to create a completely new tool that can fully edit  any NK2 file.

NK2Edit is the new NK2 editing tool that can edit any field in the NK2 file (Including the display name, the email address, the MS-Exchange address, the drop-down name, and more), delete unwanted records, add new records from the address book or by typing any email address/MS-Exchange address you need,  easily merge 2 or more NK2 files by using Copy & Paste, fix NK2 files that cannot be loaded by Outlook, and more…

As oppose to my previous NK2View utility, which made the changes  simply by removing and injecting bytes on the existing NK2 file, NK2Edit reads the entire NK2 file into memory, analyzes all records and fields, and then when you choose to save the file, it writes all records into the file, including all the changes that you made.  Writing the entire content into the file decreases the risk of getting a corrupted NK2 file and ensures that the NK2 file will be saved as healthy file that can be used by Outlook.

NK2Edit Main Window

NK2Edit also provides some unique features for advanced users, including the “Raw Text Edit Mode” which allows you to view and edit the records of NK2 file as a text file that looks like the .ini files of Windows.  NK2Edit also allows you to write simple scripts that add, remove or modify records in the NK2 file.

Raw Text Edit Mode

Nk2Edit License

As you may notice, the license conditions for using NK2Edit are different from other NirSoft utilities.  NK2Edit is completely free for personal use at your home, like all other NirSoft utilities. However, if you need to constantly use NK2Edit in your business/company, then you have the purchase commercial license.  The reason for this license change is the lesson I learned from my NK2View utility.  I found out that .NK2 file editing is highly needed by many companies and some of them requested my help and support for using NK2View.   So I found myself in a  ridiculous situation where I have to waste my time on supporting profitable companies, but without getting any payment from it, because NK2View is freeware and companies usually don’t send donations.

This “Free for personal use” license  is the best solution for my new NK2Edit utility, because it still provide a great and completely free product for all NirSoft users at home, but requires a payment for commercial companies that may need more support and features for using this tool in corporate environment. Hopefully, the income that I get NK2Edit licenses will also allow me to spend more time on development of my other freeware tools.

It’s also important to mention that there is no any change in the license of all other utilities of NirSoft, and you can freely use them in your business organization.

For more information about NK2Edit utility, click here.

Edit record window of NK2Edit

The new versions of SmartSniff and SniffPass utilities allows you to capture network traffic with the version 3.x of Microsoft Network Monitor driver. This feature is especially useful for the users of Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, because the old version of Microsoft Network Monitor doesn’t support these operating systems.

Also, Microsoft Network Monitor 3 provide a new feature for Windows Vista/7/2008 users – it allows you to switch your Wifi adapter to ‘Monitor Mode’ (Only if the adapter supports this mode), which means that it can capture the traffic from other wireless networks around your location.

When using this ‘Monitor Mode’ with SmartSniff, it won’t be able to capture the traffic from most of the wireless networks, simply because they are encrypted with WEP/WPA. However,  if there are some unencrypted wireless networks in your area,  SmartSniff will be able to capture and show the content of the transferred TCP/UDP packets.

SmartSniff with Network Monitor 3 driver

Another important feature added into the new version of  SmartSniff/SniffPass is the ‘Promiscuous Mode’ check box for WinPCap driver capture mode. In previous versions, these utilities always turned on the  ‘Promiscuous Mode’, but with many Wifi adapters, the capturing doesn’t work at all when using them in Promiscuous Mode.  Starting from these new version of SmartSniff/SniffPass, the Promiscuous Mode is turned off by default, and you can turn it on in the ‘Capture Options’ window when you need it.

NetRouteView is a new utility that can be used as alternative to the standard route utility (Route.exe) of Windows operating system. It displays the list of all routes on your current network, including the destination, mask, gateway, interface IP address, metric value, type, protocol, age (in seconds), interface name, and the MAC address.

It also allows you to modify, delete, and add new routes to your network adapters.

For more information about this new utility, click here.

NetRouteView

OperaPassView is a new password recovery utility that decrypts the content of the Opera Web browser password file (wand.dat) and displays the list of all Web site passwords stored in this file. You can easily select one or more passwords in the OperaPassView window, and then copy the passwords list to the clipboard and save it into text/html/csv/xml file.

Currently, OperaPassView cannot decrypt the passwords if they encrypted with the master password. I’ll possibly add support for master password in future versions.

For more information about OperaPassView, click here.

OperaPassView

When you search the content of files with Windows search, there are special plug-ins known as “IFilter” that allows Windows to search inside different file formats. For example: If you request to search for a string inside a Word document file (.doc extension),  the “Microsoft Office Filter” component (OffFilt.dll) is used for reading and parsing the Word document.

SearchFilterView is a new utility that allows you to easily view the list of IFilter components installed on your computer, as well as it allows you to add and remove the file extensions that are used for the specified IFilter.

SearchFilterView is available to download from here.

SearchFilterView

AppCrashView is a new utility that allows you to easily watch the application crashes that have been occurred in your system. There is one major drawback for this tool – it currently only works under Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 2008, so most of Windows users cannot use it.  This utility relies  on the .wer files (W.E.R = Windows Error Reporting) created only by  the newer versions of Windows (Windows 7/Vista/2008), and thus older versions of Windows are not supported.

It’s possible that in future versions, I’ll also add support for Windows XP/2000/2003 by using Dr. Watson (Drwtsn32.exe) or other debug component that automatically captures the application crash information.

For more information about AppCrashView utility, click here.

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