Winternals
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| Winternals Software LP | |
|---|---|
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| Type | |
| Genre | Software development |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Founder | Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich |
| Headquarters | Austin, TX, USA |
| Key people | Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich |
| Parent | Microsoft |
| Website | www.winternals.com |
Sysinternals was a Web site (formerly known as "ntinternals") operated by the company Winternals Software LP, which was located in Austin, Texas. It was started by software developers Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich in 1996, and was acquired by Microsoft on July 18, 2006.[1]
The Web site featured several freeware tools to administer and monitor computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems. The software can now be found at Microsoft. The company also sold data recovery utilities and professional editions of their freeware tools.
It was Mark Russinovich who sparked the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal in an October 2005 posting to the Sysinternals blog.[2]
In April, 2006, Geek Squad, a Best Buy company, was accused of allegedly using unlicensed versions of Winternals software that Winternals had supplied the company with to use during contract negotiations for using the software on a permanent basis. The contract talks broke down and Geek Squad's parent company Best Buy did not notify its Geek Squad Agents to stop using and discard the software. A judge granted a restraining order on April 12, requiring that use of all unlicensed software be stopped, and forcing Best Buy to turn over all copies of Winternals software within 20 days.[3] After settlement, a version of the Winternals software was released to be used by Geek Squad.[4]
On July 18 2006, Microsoft Corporation acquired Russinovich's two sites. Russinovich explained that Sysinternals will remain active until Microsoft agrees on a method of distributing the tools provided there.[5] However, NT Locksmith, a Windows password recovery utility, was immediately removed.
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[edit] Source Code and Technology
Most of the utilities that were developed were usually accompanied with the source code written in C, C++ or ASM. The code was compatible with Visual C++ v. 6.0 and could be compiled with little effort by a Windows developer. Some of the more interesting utilities did not come with source code, or a lesser version would be available with the source. In later releases, there were 64-bit versions of the utilities and even Linux versions as well.
However since the Microsoft acquisition, none of the utilities currently available is accompanied with source code, and the Linux versions are no longer maintained or available.
Some of the coding techniques that were used were based on the Windows Native API, which were mostly undocumented by Microsoft at the time. Using these coding examples - with source - would enable developers to create extraordinary programs that performed operations that would otherwise have been impossible using a standard API. Examples include hiding Registry information, intercepting or hooking APIs to monitor file operations by the OS, as well as Registry operations.
[edit] Products
Winternals produced a number of utilities, now available from Microsoft, including defragmentation utilities Contig and PageDefrag, monitoring products such as RegMon and FileMon, diagnostic tools such as Process Explorer and RootkitRevealer, and tools that simply fill perceived gaps in Microsoft's products like NTFSDOS that allows NTFS volumes to be read by Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system.
Also very popular was the Winternals Administrator Pak which contained ERD Commander 2005, Remote Recover 3.0, NTFSDOS Professional 5.0, Crash Analyzer Wizard, FileRestore 1.0, Filemon Enterprise Edition 2.0, Regmon Enterprise Edition 2.0, AD Explorer Insight for Active Directory 2.0, TCP Tools
[edit] References
- ^ Microsoft Acquires Winternals Software. Company Press Releases. Winternals Software (July 18, 2006). Retrieved on 2006-07-18.
- ^ Mark Russinovich (October 31, 2005). Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far. Sysinternals Blog. Retrieved on 2006-12-18.
- ^ "Best Buy's Geek Squad Accused of Pirating Software", FOX News. Retrieved on December 16, 2006.
- ^ "Winternals & Best Buy/Geek Squad Settle Federal Lawsuit", Winternals press release. Retrieved on December 16, 2006.
- ^ Mark Russinovich (July 18, 2006). On My Way to Microsoft!. Sysinternals Blog. Retrieved on 2006-12-18.
[edit] External links
- Sysinternals page on Microsoft TechNet
- Sysinternals Live
- Winternals homepage - (Redirected to Microsoft Winternals announcement page)
- Web Archive.org link to historical information Winternals
