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SeanKilleen
Asked: 2012-05-11 11:10:18 +0800 CST

Program to snapshot changes made during an install?

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Question

Is there a decently-priced (free preferred) tool that will allow me to see all changes made to a system (disk, registry, etc.) during the process of an install?

Background

I would like to capture changes made by a software installation so that I can forward them to a security team who will be able to white-list and authorize those actions.

At the current time, if an install makes changes to the user's documents folder or adds a registry key, we don't have a good way of picking that up. And I know there must be a better way.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

windows installation monitoring

3 Answers

  1. There are several ways of accomplishing this. One of my favorites is using WinInstall LE (a free product which has changed hands many times over its lifetime) to capture the installation package. The same pre / post snapshot method is available in many products. It'll detail exactly what changes are being made.

    You can also use a couple of the sysinternals tools to do the same thing but it tends to have more background noise.

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  2. I haven't used it personally, but I have a few developers who vouch for it; ZSoft Uninstaller. It's free.

    Here's a walk-through for it too!

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  3. I've been using What Changed.

    Its small, portable, fast, and free. It does an 'actual' before and after scan. This should produce a report suitable for your auditors.

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