We usually trust everything that they send us by email or that we find on a web page to download. We want to solve a problem and we trust any online site that offers us a program that fixes the fault we have. We download it without thinking or looking for information, it is an executable file and we make the problem worse. These files can have many risks and that is why we will explain in the next paragraphs how to know the content of a .exe file before executing it on your computer and that there is no going back.
They shouldn't always be a risk and you should not always run away from them since they are necessary. But .exe files are one of the common ways of infecting a computer, packaged files that can infect our computer in a matter of seconds from the moment we download it and decide to open it. The most advisable thing is to use antivirus but you can also see what is inside, search for information and make sure before double-clicking by trusting them.
What is a .exe file
A .exe file is an executable file, as its own extension tells us… Exe is executable or executable in Spanish. They are programs that start to work by double-clicking on them and that you have used countless times on your Windows computer. They are simply opened with a double click or with the right button and touching "Open" in the drop-down menu. The problem with them is that they are opened and executed the moment we follow these steps without being able to know what is inside or if they are reliable or not. That is why they can be a risk and that is why it is recommended that we always try to know their content or know what there is.
They are dangerous? They are files that we use every day and they do not pose any problem in most cases if they are downloaded from secure stores, from reliable websites or even from trusted people. But they may have some kind of malware inside you that activates automatically with that double click to open and run it. If it comes to you through an email, for example, or you download it from an unknown website, it is recommended that we look before because it can pose a risk. That is... Be suspicious if you download an image or a video or a document and instead of having .jpeg or .mp4 or .pdf format you see that it says .exe and you download it.
Research and know its content
We can search for information in case it is a download of a program or any other file. There may be comments in the forum or website where we have downloaded it and users explain whether or not it is reliable, whether or not we should run it. But there is not always or it is not always advisable to trust everything that appears or the comments on this page and that is why there are applications that allow us to explore what is there before clicking and putting ourselves in danger.
One of these applications is InnoEx, a software that we can get completely free of charge, that we can take with us to examine these types of files on any computer since it is portable and is also compatible with Windows 10 and recent versions of the operating system so that we can use it now. It is not the only one but it is the most popular and common to open this type of file so we explain how to use it and how to make the most of it.
Innoex to view .exe files
Innoex is a tool that allows us to know what we download before installing it so as not to take risks as we have explained in previous paragraphs. We can avoid downloading viruses unnecessarily and the tool is free and portable, so it will be enough to download it on our computer to use it whenever we want. Of course, there are conditions: The only but that can be put to this tool is that it only allows examining the content of executables created with Inno Setup, so it will not always be valid but in many cases we can see the content without any problem since most of these executables are created with this tool. It is easy to use and very complete.
To download, start using InnoEx and know what we are going to install before we regret it, we just have to go to this same link and get hold of the tool. Once you have it, we follow a few simple steps. It is a portable file that works in Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 and is completely free so it will cost us nothing to download it.
When we have already downloaded the application and launched it on our computer (it is a portable file, as we have said, so you will not have to install anything) we will see how it has a fairly simple interface, since just by selecting or dragging the executable file that we want to analyze, InnoEx will automatically show us all its content. There we can see the files and libraries that make up the .exe file, view the text files or even execute different parts independently before installing the application.
If something seems suspicious to us, we can investigate through the Internet to see if a file or library could correspond to some type of malware and if so, avoid being infected by deleting the file, since we have not yet executed it.
To see what is in the file we simply have to drag the executable to InnoEx. The screen will automatically show us what is inside and we can know what type of files are inside the executable. We can see them with a normal viewer by double-clicking or we can search for information on the Internet if we consider that any of the extensions that appear do not sound like anything to us and we do not know if they can be safe or not, if they are reliable or not.
It is very easy to handle and for all users so it is convenient to have it at hand if we want to prevent it.
Link: https://www.adslzone.net/esenciales/windows/contenido-archivo-ejecutable/