ID Any File: What Is netfxsbs10.exe Anyway?

It happens all the time when you're rooting around in long-forgotten folders or cleaning up your PC: You encounter a bunch of files with meaningless names, ancient timestamps, and questionable validity. What are they? Where did they come from?

Bit9 FileAdvisor is a free online and Windows-based tool to help you make sense of such odd files like netfxsbs10.exe and the ever-popular bvrpdiag.dll. Yes, you can do a simple web search for these file names, and often get better results than FileAdvisor can provide. (Despite the claim of having over a billion files indexed, it's still pretty easy to stump the system with common system files.)

But FileAdvisor has a killer feature that the web can't touch: Install the "advanced" FileAdvisor Desktop Utility by providing a little more information during registration, and you'll have access to a new right-click menu option in Windows Explorer. Just find a file you're not sure about, right-click it, and a web page opens with everything FileAdvisor knows. This is much faster than entering the file name manually, but it also provides more accurate results. Why? Because FileAdvisor calculates a unique hash (a sort of fingerprint) for each file you analyze: This way it can tell the difference among different files of the same name. How else could you possibly know which uninstall.exe goes with which application? The right-click functionality and hashing feature make it worth the few minutes of time it takes to enter your address and install the software.

As for netfxsbs10.exe, it turns out it's part of Microsoft .NET's installation utilities. Guess I'll hang on to it.