SIW 2009-10-22     Suggested by John Matthews - Updated by Checker on 13 Nov 2009 1MB (uncompressed) - Popularity score (9175) Website - Screenshot - Download - Comments (41) - Post comment - Permalink

Posted comments:

 RickyF: This is one absolutely fantastic utility. Did I mention it is free, too. [2006-03-25 09:46]

 Decomp: It's one of those programs that needs admin rights. No joy on carefuly protected computersystems where there's no access to an account with admin rights. That's a fact, not a flaw. It's a great program. [2006-05-05 04:26]

 Josh: I hated it when Aida32 bit the dust. Now I have found a system info tool that recognizes my newer hardware...

Awesome!!!! [2006-05-06 05:57]

 Luigi: This is a beautifully made program. Even finds product keys - I can tell this is going to be useful! Kudos to the creator - absolutely amazing. [2006-07-07 09:22]

 Kevin: Wow! An amazing program! A+.... [2006-07-07 09:23]

 Claus V: Appears the Website link above is now being redirected to to a new home location: http://www.gtopala.com/index.html. Great program. I use it more than Belarc Advisor now. [2006-08-04 07:08]

 Waldo3: I could not find the IRQ info. Am I missing something, or do I still need to go to Win's System Information utility? A very nice program otherwise. [2007-01-12 07:01]

 Spyder: If you dont have it you need it, the best! [2007-01-15 23:00]

 Kyle: Did anyone compare this with winaudit?
http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=610

They seem very similar. [2007-01-16 21:00]

 GBJ: I compared SIW with WinAudit and ended up keeping WinAudit, even though SIW is a great utility. Reasons: WinAudit.exe is literally half the size of SIW.exe and it has selectable options that are stored in an INI file in the apps folder. Both apps show you tons of system properties. IMHO, you can't really go wrong with either one. [2007-07-03 03:10]

 das88: Wow! I had no idea that passwords for Deleted outlook express accounts are still recoverable. Anyone know how to delete these entirely?

Great portable app. [2007-07-03 14:37]

 appwinx: I prefer SIW instead of WinAudit and other apps because 1) it's standalone, 2) relatively small, 3) shows more in-depth info that WinAudit doesn't, e.g. info about memory [2007-07-25 19:59]

 LurkMastR: I'd also love to know how to get rid of those passwords from the deleted Outlook Express accounts. [2007-09-18 11:21]

 Adam: Very useful and lightweight. Couldn't ask for more!! [2007-10-10 13:54]

 CrimsonStrange: Um... SIW is no longer freeware... not entirely. The program itself says so: as of version 1.72 (build 637 and possibly earlier than that), there is now a "Register" option under the Help menu. Try exporting your "Secrets" usernames & passwords as a .txt file - it'll tell you that feature is "not available in the Freeware version of SIW". It's still a great program - it's just a shame that Mr. Topala decided to cripple it. [2008-01-04 20:25]

 glatzfront: Why does SIW need internet access when creating a report? [2008-01-23 11:45]

 MiDoJo: @CrimsonStrange
I was wondering about that I just opened my 1.73 and it kept asking for a register to and a reg key. so I gave it what it wanted. I put in my name and a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers, which I made up out of thin air. and it created a .lic file and restarted the prog. Then it asked me again you need to register. So I go to the website and type in registration in the search box. . . and no results WTF Topala do we now have to remove you from Andrew's wonderful site [2008-03-28 10:32]

 Gabriel Topala: SIW is free for personal use.
Please read the License Agreement from http://www.gtopala.com/tss/license-agreement.html
If you are trying to use it in a corporate environment, it will ask you to buy the Technician's Version or the Business Version.
Btw, SIW 2008-04-02 is available at http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html [2008-04-07 07:20]

 PlexPro: I apparently installed this program 4 October 2007 here at work and then soon forgot about it. This morning, Sophos Anti-Virus quarantined this program, with the message "File 'C:\Program Files\Topala\siw.exe' belongs to virus/spyware Mal/Emogen-R." So I started doing some Googling. Prevx, at http://www.prevx.com/filenames/2515411809344552509-0/SIW.EXE.html, seems to think that this program is very dangerous, and gives a long list of specific technical reasons. I would be interested in hearing from Mr. Topala an explanation. If his software really is clean, then I need to know why Sophos and Prevx can be so wrong before I can have confidence to use it, and perhaps he should contact those companies. [2008-04-16 05:33]

 Gabriel Topala: This is Sophos' reply:

Gabriel,
What you would want to do is send an email to our virus labs so that they can review the site and/or files that you wish to send along to confirm if there is a real threat or if something is getting triggered as a false positive. You can send that information to samples@sophos.com (not a reply to this email). Once they have your request they will review it and get back to you with the results.
Regards,

William Drapeau
Sophos Technical Support

US Support: +1 888 SOPHOS 9
Web: www.sophos.com
Sophos - security and control

--Original Message--
From: admin@gtopala.com
Date: 4/16/2008 8:04:35 AM
To: supportus@sophos.com
Subject: Support query submitted from www.sophos.com: Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 2000/XP/2003

The following file(s) was submitted on:
Wed Apr 16 12:02:05 2008
________________________________________________________________________________

type_of_communication: incident
contact: email
name: Gabriel Topala
company: Topala Software Solutions
emailaddress: admin@gtopala.com
country: Canada
incident_type: Other non-technical
product: Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 2000/XP/2003
product_version: 25652
product_version_text: 7.3.0
os: Windows XP Professional
os_version: 21065
os_version_text: SP2
description: The Sophos antivirus falsely identifies my program SIW (http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html) as infected with Mal/Emogen-R.
Please clarify. [2008-04-16 07:50]

 Gabriel Topala: I sent the SIW.EXE to samples@sophos.com ; waiting for a reply [2008-04-16 07:52]

 PlexPro: Thank you Gabriel! You have restored my confidence! [2008-04-18 09:33]

 PlexPro: I see you haven't yet posted the Sophos response that you sent me privately. For the rest of the world, please note that Sophos cleared SIW. [2008-04-18 09:35]

 PlexPro: I heard from Prevx Tech Support. They at least state that SIW.exe is not identified by their product as malware. It apparently is a matter of available time to complete analysis before they will state that SIW.exe is innocuous.

From Prevx Tech Support:

Dear Prevx User,

Prevx Technical Support have responded to your query.

Here is the message that has just been posted:

Subject: CORPORATE INBOX

Hi,

On the webpage in question, we remark the following:

"What you should do about SIW.EXE:
Check Your PC Now
The most common objects with the name of SIW.EXE have yet to be classified as safe by our research department."

This file would not be marked as malware by any of our products.

Regards,

Prevx Support [2008-04-21 05:32]

 a: This is probably the only tool you'll need if you want to know about a computer, the information is vast, you'll probably get lost and want to run home to your mommies wimpy utility belt. :D [2008-06-24 06:23]

 12omy: in this new version neighborhood scna didn't work properly, i can't found any computer in my network.

i'm sorry for my bad English [2008-06-28 14:34]

 oTHEr: You have to respect a program when it's Author replies to user concerns! :)
I've been using it for MANY Years, and haven't had a problem in all that time - Very Useful, and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by 9 out of 10 Software Review Sites! [2009-03-28 07:09]

 oTHEr: @ das88 & @ LurkMastR -

For help getting rid of (unwanted) Passwords from Outlook Express, and more - See:
http://www.insideoe.com/resources/tools.htm

Good Resource! [2009-03-28 18:43]

 Dave: SIW.EXE is detected by various Anti-virus - Anti-Spyware because is inserts a driver onto your computer which is considered an activity that is usually associated with bad things. In this case it is a legitimate program but the heuristic scanning portion of your Anti-virus - Anti-Spyware has no way to tell the difference so it "takes care" of it for you. [2009-05-18 20:34]

 Casey: Why do you keep deleting my comments? Are you scared that I will scare away your victims? For the umpteenth time, my post was this...

"My company AV is recognizing "SIW.exe" as being "Generic!artemis" and immediately deletes it.
We use SonicWall with McAfee AV - AS (Anti-virus - Anti-Spyware).
Is this another False Positive? Alternatively, is this program truly malicious?"

I dare you to leave this up. I also dare you to contact McAfee and get your program approved so it wont get deleted. I am going to. [2009-06-02 08:46]

 Fox Cole: I too got the "Generic!artemis" message, using my sister's computer today with McAfee on it. I'm steamed that it deleted my file instead of letting me choose what to do with it... but that's not an issue for this forum. What is an issue is that this tool cannot be completely portable until it's tolerated by all the AV software out there. I can't recover or re-download until I'm off this computer; otherwise, it will just get deleted again. Even if I tuck it into an encrypted volume to prevent that, I won't know whether I can safely run it without the same thing happening. Sigh. It's such a useful thing! Too bad there isn't a registration service that will take care of this for you. [2009-07-19 17:52]

 Strides: I'm also getting malware warnings (using Kaspersky. Specifically, I'm getting a warning of suspicious activity about an attempted download of file CPUZ132_X32.SYS. When Googling for references to this file I'm getting a lot of links associated with malware, but nothing specifically stating this file is a problem. Does anyone know what this file is and what it is doing?

I'm also getting an error when starting the application which also looks suspicious:

sdk.cpp-208 SDK::StartSDK

Error : C0000005 (Exception ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at address 0x1007a590.) [2009-07-22 12:10]

 JYC: 1. Download the u3 version
2. Extract it
3. Go into "Host"
4. Use Technician's version for free =P [2009-07-25 02:36]

 Mike: Fantastic program. I like its built-in suite of network tools. Why can't there be more single EXE wonders like this one? [2009-08-20 17:49]

 Webfork: Some other things not mentioned (directly) in the description: memory usage graph, Win 9x password cracker, a password reveal tool (eureka), a network scanner, open ports, open shares, network scan, local IP discovery ...

This is quite the power tool in portable software. [2009-08-22 22:33]

 ST: Hi,
Just tried to update my version from 1.67 and I got a message from AVG saying it was installing a trojan called Movehome.exe.
Have Googled but there doesn't seem to be much information about this.
Can anybody clarify please? [2009-09-14 11:17]

 ST: Had the bright idea of mailing the programme owner directly as I've seen from the comments here that he will respond. Am now in direct contact with him. [2009-09-14 16:09]

 Santasan: Link seems to be broken! [2009-10-26 21:36]

 Mr.H: Great little app. So much more info than CPU-Z. I'm a convert for sure. Keep up the great work! Thank you!!! [2009-11-24 15:10]

 Will: I cannot seem to get the "Secrets" function to work , I am using the freeware version Does it only work in the comercial one ?? [2010-01-01 01:23]

 Jordan: Under the SC Computer Crime Act, what would make this program illegal? Got arrested for looking at the report it made about one of the school's computer. [2010-01-11 05:53]

Post your comment:

All HTML tags will be removed from your comment. URLs (http, https, ftp) will be automatically detected and hyperlinked. I reserve the right to delete irrelevant, frivolous or offensive comments. For more general topics (eg. whether apps that write to the registry, leave traces on the host machine, rely on certain versions of IE etc. can be considered portable), please post to the Portable Freeware Discussion forum. If your virus scanner has detected a virus in the application, please email the author directly or post to the forum. Note that false positives (i.e. flagging a virus when there is actually none) are extremely common for virus scanners. When in doubt, try an online scanner like Online Malware Scanner or VirusTotal, which scans files using multiple anti-virus engines. It is very likely to be a false positive if only a few engines raise the red flag.