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Why executable names are important

  • Artikkeli

Charlie Kindel kicked off an interesting discussion today amongst Microsoft bloggers about the relationship between blogs, search engines, and more formal support channels such as MSDN. As a side-effect, Raymond Chen kindly pointed me at his .Text referrer-log tools, which enabled me to scratch an itch that I've had for a month.

Namely, how much should I be charging Toshiba and/or Microsoft for all the Google hits I get for my post “What is all this stuff doing on my computer?”. As it turns out, here's what people are interested in:

Hits Search term
86 000stthk.exe
43 tfnf5.exe
35 tabtip.exe
31 sapisvr.ee
23 wisptis.exe
21 trot.exe
20 tabbtnu.exe
19 tpwrtray.exe
12 ndstray.exe
18 tpa.exe
9 touched.exe
1 toshkcw.exe

 

(If you're searching for more information about one of those executables, I explain what they do in this older post)

And here are the lessons that I draw:

  • I should be charging Toshiba (000stthk, tfnf5) more than Microsoft (taptip, sapisrvr).
  • 000stthk is a terrible name for a binary - maybe people are suspicious of that 000 prefix?
  • toshkcw is a great name for a binary - as long as it's running on a Toshiba.
  • Neither Toshiba nor Microsoft have done a great job of explaining what this stuff is.

How about you? What's the most suspicious, obscure, or just plain stupid executable name that you've ever seen?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2004
    Jonathan,

    svchost.exe.

    not because of the name though. :)

    WM_CHEERS
    thomas woelfer
  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2004
    main.exe
  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2004
    Occasionaly I see DIALER.EXE in the system directory and my mind registers "war dialer".
  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2004
    Based on a discussion yesterday, security.dll (see http://www.codeproject.com/script/comments/forums.asp?msg=805461&forumid=1650#xx805461xx). Don't name any binary that you're going to use in a shared process with a system DLL's name.
  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2004
    As said before svchost.exe
  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2004
    Going off on a tangent here - why are we still tying ourselves in knots trying to cram meaning into an 8-character name? We've had long filename support for years now, so where are all the executable names that actually mean something?
  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2004
    "Explorer"
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    July 03, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2007
    Update : autoruns has gotten even better — check out my latest post about it. The first time I ran task