Sarasota PC Monitor

Practicing the Black Art (06/04)

Finding Hidden Programs

by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.

Sometimes I get questions from my students about programs on their new machines. The general form of the question is "I found this program on my system that does such-and-such, but nobody at the computer store knows anything about it. What should I do?" Like my students, you're probably unaware that your computer may contain valuable programs that you have never heard of. Of course you know and understand your internet browser, your email program, and the programs you use most frequently. Have you ever taken the time to explore your system other than look for mundane applications like your word processor? If you have, you found some bundled software that allows you to play music and video clips.

Most computers have many applications that their owners don't know about because these goodies are stored in unlikely places. It doesn't matter if you buy an off-the-shelf model or a custom built super-performing monster. If you add anything at all such as video editing software, a web cam, a printer, PDA or any kind of program or device, you have almost certainly added some new helpful application programs.

With only a small amount of effort, you can discover all the programs that you downloaded and forgot about, and the programs that came with your machine.

We'll examine several methods to find these hidden gems. You can use all of them or only the ones you feel most comfortable with. These methods work best with Windows XP, but can still be useful with other versions of the operating system.

It's amazing how often we fail to notice the obvious, so start by browsing the Programs menu.

  1. Click Start.
  2. Move your mouse pointer to the green arrow labeled All Programs and the Programs menu will appear.
  3. Move your mouse over the main menu and submenus. Items with submenus are indicated by a black triangle pointing to the right.

Most installation setup routines install somewhere in this area, making this method a good way to get a broad overview of what's installed on your computer.

After exploring the Programs menu, examine it to find Windows Explorer. Be careful you don't select Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer. They do very different things. With Windows Explorer, you can look for application files in your folders. Your higher level folders are the ones most likely to contain program files, but the sheer number of them makes this method clumsy, unwieldy, and time consuming. It's useful in giving you a good overview of how information is structured on your disk drives.

Probably the best way to find programs is to use the Search utility to look for all application files residing on your machine.

  1. {short description of image} Click Start.
  2. Select Search.
  3. In the top box type *.exe. The asterisk is a global search or "wild card" character which masks the name of the file. The ".exe" portion stands for executable, and is the standard designation for application files.
  4. Click the Search button.

The Search engine scans your disk drive, looking only at the file extensions. It then lists only the program files it finds on the disk.

Many of these file names can be murky enough to the point of being downright cryptic, making it quite a challenge to identify what they do. Here are several things you can do to reduce the level of obfuscation.

  1. Right click on the file name or its icon.
  2. From the popup menu select Properties.
  3. Examine the information in the General tab. In many cases, the Description area will give you the name of the company that published the program. If Nvidia is there, you can conclude that the application file is used to control a graphics module on your video subsystem.
  4. Click on the Version tab if it's present. You can usually find some information about the company that created the file. At the very least, you will know the program's size and location. If you are still clueless, there is one more trick in your toolbox of ideas.
  5. Open Google and type the name of the file in the text box.
  6. Press the Google Search button.

You will often be amazed at the search results. You can still come up empty even after all this, but you will succeed far more often than you will fail. :

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Copyright 2004. This article is from the June 2004 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

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