A useful old utility from the world of MS-DOS about 10 years ago is

    SNOOPER.EXE  10402 bytes  1-26-89

I run it against an unknown executable and it returns all the ASCII
strings it finds.  I have not seen a comparable utility in recent
years.  I run it from the DOS prompt with the following command string:

     c:\UTILS\snooper  filename.exe | more

The utility does not have within it a paging option, hence the "more"
command.  If by chance there is an ASCII string with tip-off words like
"Gotcha!", the executable is immediately suspect.  It is never a good
idea to run an unknown executable without knowing what it supposed to
do.

It still works just fine within my Win98 environment.  There is no
author nor copyright notice imbedded within it, so if anybody wants it,
let me know and I'll share as an email attachment.

Regards,

Terry Smythe                    smythe@mts.net
55 Rowand Avenue                (204) 832-3982
Winnipeg, MB., Canada   R3J 2N6
http://www.mts.net/~smythe