Be a power user with ServiWin from Nirsoft

One of the most trusted names in freeware is Nirsoft. We’ve been using Nirsoft utilities for a long time, and he still continues to churn out Windows utilities continuously… and most of what he does has a minimalistic interface but performs its functions admirably. Just because Nirsoft programs lack fancy graphical user interfaces does not mean they don’t function well. Proving, once again, there’s more to good software than just a pretty face.

And, before we delve into the program review, we want to be clear on something – we are don’t like and we strongly recommend you don’t use driver updater programs as they tend to cause more problems than they’re worth. So when you read on and notice the word drivers – this program does NOT update drivers. So, now that we have made that clear, read on:

Rarely do we feature something which we think would be better in the hands of advanced users, but this an exception. Those of you who are not advanced users should use this utility with extreme caution. If used incorrectly, you could really cause some problems. On the other hand, if you want to learn more about the inner-workings of your computer, this utility can help you by showing you all the things it takes to make Windows work for you. And you’ll also learn why Windows can be so touchy, especially when it comes to drivers – when you see how many drivers are running under the hood. Which is why we remind you to never update drivers unless your hardware isn’t working correctly. Updating drivers that don’t require updating can be a recipe for disaster.

Anyway…

If you’re an advanced user and you really want to dig down deep into your computer, this handy free program makes it a breeze. You can also use it to start, stop, and reset your drivers and services, so it really is a very powerful program. Remember, if you’re using 64-bit Windows, you must run this program with elevated privileges.

We’ll close with a few words from the developer:

“ServiWin utility displays the list of installed drivers and services on your system. For some of them, additional useful information is displayed: file description, version, product name, company that created the driver file, and more.

In addition, ServiWin allows you to easily stop, start, restart, pause, and continue service or driver, change the startup type of service or driver (automatic, manual, disabled, boot or system), save the list of services and drivers to file, or view HTML report of installed services/drivers in your default browser…”

You can right click on most services and drivers and learn more about it, or if you like you can instantly create an HTML file (web page) with information about all your services and drivers. In the screen shot below, I right-clicked on the A2AntiMalware service which turns out to belong to Emsisoft. See?

You can read more and/or download ServiWin (installer or zip file, no installation needed), from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/serviwin.html  .

If you’re not an advanced user and you want to be, this tool is a great way to learn more about what makes Windows tick. So download it and try it, but be very careful if you use it to make any system changes. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, don’t do it.

This program works on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8x, and Windows 10. It works on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. We tested this program on 24 June 2015 and found it free from malware and/or any added files.