Appnimi All-In-One Password Unlocker 3.8.6

Overview

If you’re a password-maniac and lock your files whenever it’s possible, then it’s almost certain that eventually you’ll forget some passwords. So you can either leave the files or try to recover their passwords somehow, like with the help of Appnimi’s All-In-One Password Unlocker. It works with different types of files (zip, rar, pdf, etc.) and can use either brute-force or dictionary attack to unlock them.

Installation

Launch the setup package to start the installation procedure, which is easy and won’t take long to finish. At some point throughout the process a new window will open and ask you to install Babylon Toolbar and make Babylon search the default search engine, homepage and new tab. If you don’t want Babylon Toolbar and those changes, click Cancel and close the window that opens next from the top right corner that says “Skip”. But it’s not over yet, since you will be asked to install RegClean Pro as well. Click “Decline” if you wish to skip it and watch as the installation finishes.

Supported operating systems are Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and 7.

Interface

The interface could be more elegant, with less advertising on it. But other than that, it has its functions nicely organized in 6 tabs: Inputs, Destination, Brute Force, Dictionary, Save and Load. The first tab is the main one; it’s where you select the file you want to unlock, and if you know the prefix or suffix of the password, enter that information too in the appropriate text boxes. In the same tab you also pick the minimum and maximum length of the password. The second tab is used to select the destination folder of the unlocked file (for ZIP and RAR files only). From the third or fourth tab you’re going to initiate the recovery process, since they represent the brute-force and dictionary attack types respectively. In the brute-force tab you can define the characters used for generating the password, whilst on the dictionary tab you have to browse for a wordlist file to use. Your program preferences can be saved and loaded from the Save and Load tabs.

Pros

Currently the supported file types that can be unlocked are ZIP, RAR, PDF and XLS, with the author’s promise to add support for many more file formats. If you try to unlock a ZIP or RAR file (and succeed) the program will automatically extract its contents into the folder you specified in the Destination tab, whereas if you unlock other file types, their unlocked version will be copied into that folder.

Unlike other password recovery software, this one can use two types of attack: brute-force and dictionary. Brute-force goes through all the possible combinations of characters you’ve given it until it finds the correct one, but it’s practically useless for passwords longer than 5-6 characters because it would take an enormous amount of time to finish the process in an average computer. The dictionary type of attack goes through a list of words in a text file, and is more likely to work if the password is not complex.

The settings you made in the program can be saved and loaded at a later time.

Cons

The setup is quite intransigent, since it wants to install additional software and won’t back down easily. In fact, the program is portable and all you need to use it is the executable, which means that all the trouble you went through during the installation was just for the advertised software.

Additionally, the advertisements in the program take up too much space in the window, plus every time you open the program you get redirected to its homepage.

Regarding its functionality, it’s not very fast and could take a lot of time to find a password using either method. Moreover, you can’t stop the process once it begins (the “Stop” buttons don’t work) unless you close the program. Another thing that doesn’t work is the “Help” button, which redirects you to an error page.

Alternatives

Unrar Extract & Recover (free) is a software like All-In-One Password Unlocker, but it definitely has more limitations. It is only able to use the dictionary attack method, and it doesn't support files other than RAR archives. cRaRk (free) is another substitute, which also supports only RAR files, but uses the brute-force method and is one of the fastest software available.

Conclusion

Average software with not many features and quite a lot of cons, although the fact that it supports multiple file types and two attack methods is a big advantage.