Every software installation ans system update has an impact on the computer’s file system and the Windows Registry. That’s most of the time intended and necessary to run the software program or operating system properly. Some tools however add data to the system that could be – at best – classified as spammy and at worst seen as malicious.
Adding an entry to the system startup items without asking the user for permission or adding a system icon to the list of devices is another. Monitoring those Registry and file changes can be helpful in analysing why something happened and where it’s source is located.
What Changed is a portable system application that can take system snapshots and compare those system snapshots with a system state at a later time. This can be highly useful during software installation. A system snapshot would be created before the installation and that snapshot could be compared to the state of the system after the installation.
The computer’s file system and the parts of the Registry that should be scanned for the system snapshot can be selected in the program interface. Taking the Registry and system snapshot takes a while depending on the size of the hard drive and the amount of files stored on it.
The same main interface contains the Compare button which compares a previously saved system snapshot with the current state. The program basically scans the system a second time and compares the first and second snapshot to discover differences.
The changes are saved in a snapshot file in the same directory as the application. It’s a simply text file that points to Registry keys and files that have been changed or added.
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I’ve been using Regshot, and it’s portable too. I’m gonna be lazy and copy/paste a description from the readme:
Regshot is a small,free and open-source registry compare utility that allows you to quickly take a snapshot of your registry and then compare it with a second one – done after doing system changes or installing a new software product. The changes report can be produced in text or HTML format and contains a list of all modifications that have taken place between snapshot1 and snapshot2. In addition, you can also specify folders (with sub filders) to be scanned for changes as well.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/regshot/
I’ve been using Regshot as well, but I tried out What Changed after reading this. Wow, what a difference. It takes Regshot about 15 seconds to take the first scan of the registry on a test computer, while I gave up on What Changed after 8 minutes while it was still scanning classes_root.
dear sir
can you please provide me with program?
thanks in advance
How can I monitor windows registry in real time? I want to see the changes that is made on registry after opening file, renaming icons etc. How can I do that?
@limaj: Something called process monitor (procmon.exe) from SystemInternals will do that for you. SystemInternals is owned by Microsoft, so you know they don’t make crappy 3rd-party skunkware tools.
lol, nice program, but…i will probably be faster with eye compere through registry