drscouse Posted December 1, 2005 Share Posted December 1, 2005 Ive been searchin for ages for an app that will monitor files placed on your computer, and registry details added modified.. during an installation. Many apps currently available just seem to be variations of the ADD/REMOVE utility in windows, and dont allow you to see whats actually been put on your hd, and allow you to completely uninstall all traces. Taking a snapshot of the filesystem and registry both pre & post install, and listing the modifications.Norton used to have CleanSweep, which has since long gone, and was somewhat primative, are there any modern day versions/alternatives??Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azagahl Posted December 2, 2005 Share Posted December 2, 2005 You could use FileMon and RegMon to watch what a process is doing.I'm not sure how well these will work with the Sony's rootkit spyware installer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eck Posted December 3, 2005 Share Posted December 3, 2005 The old methods of taking snapshots got programs like Norton Cleansweep and McAfee Uninstaller into trouble when registrys got too big to fit in the maximum snapshot. The programs would just crash.I think McAfee still offers QuickClean, which replaced Uninstaller. It can be set to offer a cleanup after a regular system uninstall, or so I believe. Last I used it was QuickClean 2, and at the time that feature never worked properly. Perhaps they've fixed it?Still, Macecraft Software offers jv16Powertools2005. This is a lot more than the old registry cleaner it started from. After uninstalling a program, its Software Manager (or Registry Manager, one of those, the other just lists all the add/remove entries) sees all the programs that are still hanging around in the registry. I use the manual search and it finds anything having to do with the program and lists all the entries. It's the closest thing (almost exactly like) to the old McAfee Uninstaller 5.1 that was the last McAfee version that actually did this properly. Once you delete those entries you can delete the program's folder if it's still there, then run registry cleaner (still there in jv16Powertools2005) and that program will be safely gone.I also have returned to using the latest standalone Norton GoBack. Live Update updates the cd to the latest version. I turn off System Restore and use this, as using both is redundant and a waste of space. With this, as long as I've just experimented recently, I can just click ummm, put everything back to the way it was before please and, presto, it does it!I know. Chugga, chugga, chugga goes my hard drive after any large enough change. This will shorten the life of a hard drive and also keep me waiting until GoBack catches up to me. Computing takes a bit longer but it's worth it. I'd rather press a button and wait 5 minutes or so than restore an image that I also have to take the time to create. If you get this, turn it off when defraging or doing video editing or creating. No need putting your hard drive through all that work while GoBack is catching up. Turning it off and then on when your done with massive file changes takes a lot less time. Just be sure you're happy the way things are before turning it off since you're gonna start wherever you are when you turn it on again. It erases the past when you disable it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted December 3, 2005 Share Posted December 3, 2005 Before I started using Adminstudio, inctrl5 always worked well at tracking system changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scubar Posted December 4, 2005 Share Posted December 4, 2005 ive been using Total Uninstall and have had very good results with it. once the process is monitored u can either view the details in the program or as i prefer to export the changes and reg changes to seperate files that i can view in notepad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drscouse Posted December 4, 2005 Author Share Posted December 4, 2005 Thanks to you all for your comments....The reason for the need is to enable me to install my games on a different partition, however, there are still files and maybe keys copied to the OS folders and registry... I want to be able to see, and copy any of these, so incase of rebuilds, I could just copy these back over without the need to reinstall the game and over-write the original install.Ive just been trying Total Uninstall and it seems to do what Im after, I was just looking for alternatives. Cheers:-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eidenk Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 There is no better tool for monitoring installs than InstallWatch Pro. It's free.See this thread on how to use it : http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=49820It skips some files and locations by default unless you remove skipit.dll from it's folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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