The Most Useful Set of Free Programs EVER

[@samsoulee]

This Nir guy is actually my hero .

[@megatech1966]

Yes. He’s great

[@JuniorzGTX]

Yes

[@riceballsenthusiast5899]

This person got me with that ps3 to ps4 trick back then though

[@ITILII]

Samy is My Hero :-)

[@AtrixRBX]

@@riceballsenthusiast5899 rip

[@iamvinku]

Mark Russinovich (Sysinternals) and Nir Sofer (NirSoft) have done more for Windows than literally any other dev out there

[@ROCKVIDEOMONTHLY]

I was just about to add comment mentioning sysinternals! Haha I’m still amazed at the number of things he found a way to hook into and utilize EDIT: I wasn’t to end of video yet when I posted, didn’t realize he mentioned sysinternals too lol

[@absoleet]

M$ felt the same way and bought Sysinternals so Mark I think still works for M$ today.

[@hisham_hm]

@@absoleet Mark is the CTO of Microsoft's cloud product now!

[@umaroon6803]

Out where?

[@CaltaTomas]

What about Dave Plummer (Task manager)? Can you imagine living without task manager?

[@HamedEmine]

You forgot Volumouse from Nirsoft, you have absolutely no idea how much handy it is to control the volume pretty much instantly with the mouse hovering over the taskbar (or anything you set) and scrolling. It can also be used to control the screen brightness and other audio parameters like your mic volume for example. It's just neat!

[@andymouse]

Yeah this sounds epic !...cheers.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Neat, I just checked and that's built-in to my system. I bound the keys for that to Win+Up and Win+Down and now I have one more easy method. I'm using Slackware Linux with KDE, by the way.

[@HamedEmine]

@@anon_y_mousse I was looking for an alternative to Volumouse on Linux Mint but I couldn't find any, and someone mentioned that it was built-in but I couldn't find it so I gave up. All I wanted was to control the volume with the mouse without having to touch the keyboard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@HamedEmine]

@@andymouse Glad that helped! Cheers!

[@srpenguinbr]

@@anon_y_mousse It's great, every OS should have this feature and custom keyboard shortcuts. I use email+shift or email+shift+alt to control volume

[@Reddotzebra]

I'm currently adding this whole suite to a rescue USB that I previously made thanks to your video on Ventoy and Hiro's rescue CD. So now it's basically going to be the ultimate all-in-one software toolkit.

[@mokisan]

What was his previous video? I am thinking of making one rescue usb too. But I am quite novice in these things. I am confused as to what folder and files I should put.

[@fonkbadonk5370]

I also like WinDirStat which gives a really useful visual representation of your data storage. Great for finding big files or folders that hog your SSD!

[@nurax]

I use WinDirStat too! :) I've heard that other programs, like WizTree, are faster for local storage using NTFS tho. Just as a sidenote.

[@re.liable]

@@nurax WizTree is faster for me on either HDD or SSD

[@nurax]

@@re.liable Thanks for confirming that!

[@emaaaaax]

oh he made it? i used it for years i had no idea lol

[@jimmysoncookland5446]

Spacesniffer is my go to for this. So good.

[@GYTCommnts]

Yeahhhh! Recognition for NirSoft! Awesome! This great developer and Mark Russinovich's SysInternals Suite have some of the best Power Tools for Windows ever! (Process Explorer, for ex., should be embedded in Windows already). Thank you for bringing this! 💪

[@thepenguin9]

Procexp from sys internals is a godsend with the process eyedropper where you select a window and it immediately shows you the relevant process. Super handy when you get popups with no apparent source

[@JohnSmith-ws7fq]

Wow, I never realized all the Nirsoft tools were made by one man. Have sent a donation to his site.

[@roberts_irregular_random_rec]

I run "Wireless Network Watcher" from Nirsoft all the time. It shows all devices connected to my network. It does NOT ONLY show wireless, but ALL devices. Allows me to see if a neighbor or visiting guest is trying to jump onto my network. TIP - modify the USER TEXT for all items that you DO recognize - put some common text at the front (like your initials). This way you can tell at a glance if a device is something new or something you've already recognized as being "OK". (I actually put WIRED - or WIRELESS - in front of each device rather than using my initials - helps me to troubleshoot by quickly identifying how the device is connecting - but the choice is yours.)

[@user-cx2bk6pm2f]

ThioJoe knows what's good.. he's right, this Nirsoft stuff is super amazing. His stuff for fixing context menus and file type names is almost impossible to do otherwise.

[@anon_y_mousse]

This is pretty cool, that guy is single-handedly fixing all the deficiencies in Windows. Most of this functionality can already be done with a basic install of Linux, though not quite as easily or with as much polish, at first. There are of course many tools for these on Linux with polish, but not all in one place like this guy provides. Although, I suppose one could argue that the package management systems provide the "one place", but that's only if you know what you're looking for.

[@cannedbeverage7687]

RunAsDate is useful, as on rare occasions some poorly made programs break after a certain date. Most notably, two years ago GTA 4 Complete Edition broke and RunAsDate was the only convenient way to play the game before it got patched.

[@yw1971]

Some older games could also be extended similarly beyond their 'free trial'...

[@-DeScruff]

I'm guessing that was related to Leap year? Because yeah! This year a bunch of software and games all had their own Y2K events all because it was February 29th. Handy to know there is a rando program that can fix such issues.

[@kopeofonrac2084]

My thought was that some games use the real world clock provided by Windows. Maybe if you ran those games on a different RunAsDate, the player could trick the game into going forward or backward in time, to the frustration of the game developers, who wanted the game to run on a real world clock.

[@bailey125]

ControlMyMonitor is an extremely useful one. Since Most NirSoft programs support cmd commands you can create scripts to change the brightness and port source of your monitors at the click of a button (as well as many more settings)

[@QuinceTart10]

I think, that BatteryInfo is pretty cool, because if you are on an old laptop, and want to know, when the battery will die (I mean like force shutdown the computer) and other stuff about the bat tree, you just open it and maybe enable logging, which is useful, when you want to know, when your tree for bats died.

[@eIucidate]

At first I thought "bat tree" was a typo, then you hit me with "tree for bats" 😂😂😂 Well played

[@QuinceTart10]

@@eIucidate DankPods reference BTW.

[@ReverendTed]

One of my favorite free tools is one called SpaceMonger, which makes it VERY easy to tell what's taking up space on your drive. There's a newer version, but I still like and use SpaceMonger 1.4.0.

[@muneeblone2740]

Me: isn't a Power user Also me: downloads every power tool I'm never going to use

[@jendorei]

As long as you’re interested and research what they actually do, this already makes you enough of a power user.

[@RandyR]

Thanks for your insight on another video. Been using Norton for years. However, now that I am practically broke, i had to find a great and inexpensive replacement. Now using Guardio. Praying that it is going to work. Things were a lot easier and less stressful before the machine took over. Take care.

[@FleaMarketSocialist]

*Nirsoft is a working class hero* 👨‍💻

[@TheWilro]

I just waaay too much time playing around with these tools. Such a useful toolkit. Thanks for the video. Top-notch content.

[@darrelbryant8632]

NOW this looks like fun!! I'm glad you brought this to light. I'm going to have to schedule a month of weekends. You're the best ThioJoe!!!

[@hugosmoable]

Wireless network watcher from NirSoft is such a helpful tool. It's simple but it has helped me detect devices connected to friends or family wifi that are hogging bandwidth (or they are unwanted devices). So useful to do initial diagnostics.

[@E-1337]

thanks again for sifting through the useless info out there and sharing the useful info with us, most people dont find spending hours diving into this kind of stuff nearly as interesting as I do and i'd assume you do aswell. these vids infinitely increase the likelyhood of someone stumbling upon these things by chance :)

[@MarkusMaal]

Cursors ARE icons, the only differences are a few bytes in the file header (and the file extension of course)

[@neoqueto]

Not .ANI cursors.

[@MarkusMaal]

@@neoqueto yes, I was talking about non-animated cursors

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@neoqueto They're not entirely not icons either. It's a RIFF with icons for each frame of the animation. Also, icons are just fancy bitmaps with transparency masks and done as a list so you can have multiple resolutions in one file.

[@snarkykat]

As usual, your videos are useful enough for me to take an action with regard to my computers

[@dluziond]

already knew about this, glad its getting recognition lol

[@EtonuiYoutube]

I’ve been looking for a video like this

[@wasiqkhan8214]

i followed you for more than a year i liked your videos because its very interested and beneficial for me and i am also a student of computer science and your videos are very help full for me

[@crosenblum]

My favorite tool is Chocolatey Package Manager for windows. It helps me install almost any software, and set a schedule to automatically update it. If you are familiar with Linux, it has a similar feel.

[@cuteswan]

After every one of these videos I end up installing at least one of the things that was covered.

[@YTInnovativeSolution]

The NirSoft tools are extremely useful and seemingly simple. I wish I had his knowledge.

[@saritarai9739]

it’s really amazing session, plz continue it for more. Thank You 🙏

[@fortnitegamer-ph5jg]

Nir has so many software that he probably sometimes asks himself "Wait, do I have an app for that" while doing something

[@RichardPhillips1066]

One I use a lot is space sniffer , it shows used space visually , very useful for finding wasted space

[@zaibahmad]

Even I use SpaceSniffer mostly, but it sometimes keeps scanning indefinitely on the OS partition. WinDirStat comes pretty handy in such cases.

[@RAZKEN.]

Sounds alot like TreeSize, which is doing the same thing but with a more modern look to it.

[@RichardPhillips1066]

@@RAZKEN. correct

[@prosthetics963]

I've used his tools for years! saved myself a bunch of time on troubleshooting

[@_SJ]

"This one is more for power users..." - And the giant wall suddenly appears

[@CoderIQBE]

Thanks for the tips! I used ShellMenuView to find and fix something that bugged me for a long time!

[@mahersimence3663]

This Nir guy is actually a hero .

[@cambridgeport90]

His tools are amazing... I sort of forgot about them,until you just reminded me.

[@ees4.]

Amazing video! Been waiting for this type of video for a long time!

[@cowboyfrankspersonalvideos8869]

I use NirSoft Wireless Network Watcher (I use it for hard wired network) every day to keep track of which computers are down. Also Network Adapter Watch and WiFi Info View give an easy way to retrieve information on your computer network connections and what WiFi connections are near me.

[@maniesh]

I have been using nirsoft utilities for more than 12 years. Initially I used it to stop running malware when task manager couldn't do it. I also used it to uninstall programs that were not shown in control panel (sneaky Trojans that would eat up my RAM)

[@spakeschannel]

Also another cool guy is henrypp with his MemReduct and Simplewall. Lightweight stuff FTW.

[@LeoLeahy]

The latest videos have been very useful. Thank you!

[@RakeshKumar-pj5xm]

Thanks for the Video, Bro!!!

[@NeroDefogger]

currports looks very useful, I think I might give it a try

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Wireless key view is another nir tool that's very useful. When you come somewhere and they don't remember their wireless password, it helps a lot

[@d3xbot]

My favorite part of BlueScreenView is that you can toggle an old-school WinXP style blue screen display in the lower pane which (to me) is a lot more useful since I know how to read those

[@phoenixpcrepairs-hartbeesp4226]

Hi Thio. I love using mailpv,it is super usefull for extraction of passwords on outlook installations. Ear trumpet lets you control everything with audio running on your pc,best is that you can set vol independendly. Best free search app is everything and its independent from windows search.

[@sadmankabirchowdhury6339]

wow a video at my birthday Thx Thiojoe :)

[@CattopyTheWeb]

Happy birthday

[@roxcyn]

Happy birthday 🎁 🎉 🎂

[@nemtudom5074]

1:50 YES I've been dealing with inconsistent usb dropouts lately, and that sounds like the exact thing to solve the problem!

[@billss19]

*Extremely* useful information! *Thanks*

[@MindCaged]

NirSoft is awesome, I've had several problems over the years or needed certain information, and it was surprising how many times nirsoft had a program to do just what I needed. As for RunAsDate, I did find one good practical use for it, I have a bunch of old flash games on my computer but since the devs decided to give it a fixed cut off date where it pretty much won't run anymore, I just use RunAsDate to run the Flash Viewer program with a date /before/ flash's cutoff date. I know there's third parties trying to make their own software to run flash games, but last I checked they weren't 100 percent compatible, and I have a custom flash launcher that uses the ActiveX control, which I'm not aware of any third party software that has a replacement for it.

[@BritishBeachcomber]

I've been using Nirsoft tools since the start. Small, focused, single function tools. They do the job. They just work.

[@nihorothereal]

Haha, Nirsoft, yes, I remember it from old days :D Now all the questions - like why this functionality is not in the operating system, are solved. They are in my operating system.

[@lightning_11]

10:04 RunAsDate sounds cool for accessing April fools and other easter egg content.

[@Digital-Dan]

Most excellent! Especially the USB Log.

[@HerbAguayo]

Awesome video. I have USBLogView running right now due to the exact issue you mentioned about my Win10 system dinging (infuriatingly) when unattended. Have unplugged EVERY USB device to try and see what was the cause, only to hear 'Ding' a short while later. Thanks for the tip, now we wait...

[@ThioJoe]

A couple years back one of my Oculus Rift sensors would randomly start to connect and disconnect repeatedly and back-to-back. I didn't know what was causing it at first so I had to look in the device manager and refresh it whenever it did, and try to figure out which device had appeared or disappeared, which was tedious and took forever. USBLogView would have solved it in seconds, but I didn't know about it then.

[@sshjaguar]

Do you have 'USB selective suspend setting' turn on under your Advanced Power Settings? If so try turning that function off.

[@HerbAguayo]

@@ThioJoe As an update, I tried USBLogView and it seems to think my issue is with "Generic USB Hub" and "Generic MassStorageClass USB Device". Per SSHJAGUAR's comment to my post, I just turned off 'USB selective suspend setting'. Now we wait.

[@HerbAguayo]

@@sshjaguar Thanks for the input. I just applied turned this off for all USB Root Hubs and USB controllers using Device Manager. Fingers crossed.

[@INGIE32]

This is so useful. I was actually looking for the icon extractor to use in python. Now I can just use the shell command from subprocess to use it in Python!

[@ahoj113]

Wow! That program for BSODs is incredibly useful for me!

[@SirenGlitch]

2:22 what's that other windows explorer?

[@battleforevermore]

Free file sync is my fav. Featured a long time ago here.

[@Gamer-ct6hb]

Why is everyone commenting about AMAZING VIDEO! its been 10 minutes you couldnt have watched the video

[@roxcyn]

They know it will be an excellent video. 👌

[@Remington510]

NirCMD is pretty nice. I've been using it in the past. I remember one use case was setting a macro on a keyboard to look for my browser. If it was open, it would drag it to the foreground. If not, it would launch the browser. Without it the keyboard software would just keep launching new instances.

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

A great use for the start as date program is for starting among us on april 1st without changing your device date.

[@jendorei]

Yeah, I instantly came up with games for time-based events and easter eggs. No idea what Among Us does on April 1st though

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

@@jendorei before the most recent update, the skeld was flipped. Now, the characters turn into horses.

[@Steve157Oh]

Yup - the very first one is something I've been wanting for a couple of years!

[@DiabloXL69]

POV: thiojoe is secretly sponsored by nirsoft

[@hanro50]

Ohhh yea. This guy...if you're curious how IT folks can transfer your emails without your password, get lost product keys and so much more... It is thanks to this guy.

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

This is why I like windows more than mac

[@barracuda861]

This is similar to a CD I used to download called Hiram’s. It was filled with tools even a windows PE program to get you into your computer.

[@lawliot]

nircmd - it can open bat files and hide the window so it's really useful for running scheduled tasks hidden in the background. Of course it has many other functions too.

[@raulgalets]

this is a game changer for me. seriously.

[@RJLightning68]

Seriously love your channel Joe

[@jsking306]

Very helpful info.Thanks!

[@exow5552]

nir guy is hero! sysinternals tools were by sysinternal not made by microsoft, there is a difference.. MS bought sysinternals over.. as MS bought DOS, RemoteDesktop, Exchange.. MS does not build, they usually buy over..

[@ThioJoe]

That’s why i said *published* by Microsoft

[@novanrizaldy3870]

I have been using BatteryInfoView from this Nirsoft, it's pretty accurate for most laptop to check on how is the battery's health condition, the battery usage and charging time estimation. Really helped my days.

[@नाम_में_क्य़ा_रखा_है]

5:20 - DevManView (better alternative to dev manager) 6:44 - CurrPorts (All current connection your comp is making)

[@imaperson1060]

I use something called Default Programs Editor, which can edit the context menu, as well as extension icons, and more cool stuff.

[@ianarchibald7928]

WinDirStat is very good with storage management. It's not by Nir but it is really cool.

[@rjjeffreys]

Excellent advice on some great tools. Nirsoft is brilliant. Subbed to your channel now.

[@JustPyroYT]

Great Video! 👍👍

[@bengrogan9710]

That monitor control one sounds amazing as input select as a shortcut on both my work laptop and Desktop would make it so easy

[@dunste123]

Control my monitor is awesome! It's exactly what I needed

[@vagabond7199]

Seems to be a really good set. Thanks.

[@TwentyFirsters]

I use Everything almost every day. Very useful.

[@VERGIL-power]

Thank you hero you're videos helped me to fix my computer after i lost hope

[@youtube.user.1234]

Hey ThioJoe you should do a series in which you use Linux as your daily driver for a month. If you’re gonna do it then use Zorin OS (it is a Linux OS or distro). Don’t listen to people saying to use Arch Linux or Gentoo, those aren’t for beginners at all and require some patience and skill.

[@DrTucker]

Special folders view! That's the one! I used it a while ago but lost it due a hdd crash and couldn't remember it's name (pathetic, I know) Thanks a lot man!

[@wixlogo]

It's amazing! Thanks

[@comeonwindows7]

Thanks Joe! It's cool! 👍

[@KuroiRyuu]

Wow so cool and so usefull. I used BlueScreenView before never thought is part of this

[@HenryTheBoilermaker3rdYear]

Thanks Joe!

[@AmyraCarter]

I know I have some Nirsoft stuffs. Useful, 'nuff said.

[@jobersi10]

Thanks for another great video, this will help me in a lot! Thank you very much!

[@KekTekDe]

After that intro i did expect Busybox ^^

[@eltheooooooooo]

i love how in the shell32 thing there is a lot of icons and then theres just a tree

[@DimusTech]

Nir is most likely (according to the name and small search on Google) from my country :-) I did use in the past some of his tools but lately I didn't some are old some have other ways... BUT! YOU JUST CHANGED MY LIFE!!! I recently started making some videos with over the table view and I connect my camera to the second input of the PC, my monitor has some not so comfy touch buttons to switch inputs etc and I'd wish to have some better way, now thanks to you showing the "ControlMyMonitor" I'm gonna make those into a macro key on my keyboard!!!! Thanks!!!

[@snowdog03]

Been using since 2013. Majorgeeks is your friend.

[@mlando73]

You're the best my brother!! Thank you

[@Bkuuzin]

Some of those will help me a ton!

[@prowler1567]

Thanks for the info Joe.