WinUtilities Professional

– In response to AHMAD November 29, 2021 at 7:59 pm This program is now dangerous for computers, unlike it used to be safe to use….if someone wants my license there is an active license guaranteed authentic. because I have translated this program.
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/4b5b3780bac4e8f925e7fbdca811c5e9a4e8b708c24ce293e3cf99effc6f66de
“17 security vendors and no sandboxes flagged this file as malicious”

That’s an errant unidentified copy of v15.77 a few months ago, NOT doday’s offering of genuine WinUtilities v15.82.

I get:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/fdafc276ceff80f280c15e3f6506f0bb5f4ec691a81ecec7b5fb2e123b2572a3 <– DIFFERENT REPORT
"3 security vendors and no sandboxes flagged this file as malicious"

Note, in each report, the anti-malware tool is part of our understanding, I got 3:
ESET-NOD32 – A Variant Of Win32/YLSoft.B Potentially Unwanted
Malwarebytes – PUP.Optional.WinUtilities < — PUP = Potentially Unwanted Program
Rising – PUF.YLSoft!8.113F6 (TFE:5:QKXtpsayOeH)

All simply identified the program as WinUtilities.

NONE found any malice.

All 3 are POTENTIAL, not malice, such as the DOS 'format' command could be thought of as POTENTIALLY dangerous, of course, the way a knife is POTENTIALLY dangerous, but a chef in the kitchen uses them and depends on them – we can think of ourselves as chefs in computer kitchens.

It's probably important for us to check our own copy of any file rather than rely on other's reports since others may have an infected version for reasons I will not speculate on or comment on at the moment

Read the BEHAVIOR of our particular program at VirusTotal, and we see it's just doing what tools do – it reads stuff we want to edit on screen, and so on, nothing malicious:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/4b5b3780bac4e8f925e7fbdca811c5e9a4e8b708c24ce293e3cf99effc6f66de/behavior <– BEHAVIOR

Again, I get:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/fdafc276ceff80f280c15e3f6506f0bb5f4ec691a81ecec7b5fb2e123b2572a3/behavior <– BEHAVIOR

Neither you nor VirusTotal suggests there is any damage or compromise experienced by YLcomputing's WinUtilities various tools.

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Conversely, I find WinUtilities not only safe, even over-cautious, but actually fast, and very helpful in resolving persnickety problems that other programs miss.

Such as eliminating corrupt registry entries where the Windows directory and other directories end up with graphics characters in their name instead of the proper ASCII lettering, though removing these does not 'fix' them, it eliminates the errant entry as a bottleneck or dead-end.

I then can watch to see when the errors return, and WinUtilities helps me know what is causing them, such as when I turn off other programs, then recheck, and I see the error never returns, then I restart a particular program, and see the error crop up again, that's a clue to other crappy programmers, NOT an indicator of WinUtilities misbehavior.

Analogy: when we have a flat tire, we need a tire pressure gauge, which, of course, could also deflate the tire ( ooo, DANGEROUS ! ), but we don't blame the tire pressure gauge for malice.

It's important to use tools properly, including using VirusTotal properly.

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We're ultimately responsible, so I suggest:
– make restore points frequently
– reboot frequently
– change only one thing at a time between making restore points and rebooting and re-testing,
– restore when appropriate, that's what we make restore points for,
– reinstall Windows whenever it is more efficient than fixing an overwhelmingly infected and misbehaving antique computer – I use a fresh blank drive ( cheap ! ) and keep the old drive as a reference, pulling drivers and such from the original drive, and then use it as a spare for backups.

– – – – –

Thanks, WinningPC, for letting us explore this and share.
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