CredentialsFileView display credentials files data in Windows
CredentialsFileView is a new Nirsoft application for Windows that enables you to decrypt and display data that is stored in Windows credential files.
The program is portable which means that you can run it from any location on a machine running Windows.
CredentialsFileView is compatible with all versions of Windows starting with Windows XP and all the way up to Windows 10. This also means that 32-bit and 64-bit versions of windows are supported by the program.
Last but not least, it may be used to decrypt credential files of the running system, or credential files of other systems stored on a hard drive.
Credential files are used by Microsoft Windows for storing data securely. This includes among other things remote computer login passwords, mail accounts on exchange server passwords, Windows Live session information, MSN Messenger / Windows Messenger passwords, and Internet Explorer 7 and 8 passwords.
CredentialsFileView
The program loads the options dialog on start. It fills out information of the running system automatically so that you only need to enter the Windows login password of the account to get started.
The password is needed to decrypt the credential files. Without it, only encrypted credential files would be displayed in the main program interface.
You may modify the data of any field displayed in the setup dialog. This is useful if you want the application to use a different credentials file for instance.
The main interface lists all credential files found based on the specified paths during setup. These filenames are cryptic, and the only information you get in terms of identifying them comes in form of version and entry type columns.
You may click on a credentials file to display the decrypted content in the lower half of the interface.The program displays the information as a full hex dump by default, but you may switch the view mode to strings only which may improve readability.
It may not be necessary all the time though to go through the dumped data, as CredentialsFileView lists usernames and passwords in the table if the file was decrypted properly.
Note that you may end up with files that are not decrypted. These are indicated with a decrypted size of 0. Furthermore, no information is display in the lower half of the program interface when you select those.
You can export selected data to various formats including txt, csv, html or xml.
Closing Words
CredentialsFileView is a specialized program for Windows that is probably only useful to a handful of system administrators. While you may use it to look up saved password information and other data, for instance if you forgot those, it is of rather limited use if you run a recent version of Windows.
