Software Installation Tracking
Mancabus
Charlottesville, VA
I remember an all in one program that would monitor what changes are made to the system when you install a program. like registry changes or file/service creation.
Can someone refresh my memory as to what this program is?
I know I could do it with filemon and regmon from sysinternals, but regmon goes crazy even if I only change the mouse focus, and that is annoying.
Can someone refresh my memory as to what this program is?
I know I could do it with filemon and regmon from sysinternals, but regmon goes crazy even if I only change the mouse focus, and that is annoying.
0
Comments
http://www.ashampoo.com/
Actually, local cleansweep can uninstall soemthing that it did not monitor, though there will likelyb be some breakage of other software if other software uses same file names, with CleanSweep. Ashampoo can do same thing, break things where same-named files exist in multiple places that are nto core O\S paths. The easiest way out, where software has been misuninstalled, is to do a repair install of software, then uninstall the software as provided for by the native installer, then clean up registry with WinDoctor or manually, then delete things that the uninstaller missed.
This is what Cleansweep tries to do and what Ashampoo and SysInternals tries to do in genreal terms.
The closest thing to this for viruses is Hauri's ViRobot Expert, which is Java+Knowledge-Base+rules-based-removal driven. It is in essence a rules-based virus damage undoer but has to be used to detect viruses also to be best used. AND, the KB has to be kept up to date before undoing.
John D.
IF and only if you can install and monitor with the programs running. Last time I used Cleansweep to uninstall something that had not been monitored, it had not been monitored because the CleanSweep kept the installer from running right. And the analysis phase of what related to what, alone, took 5 hours. I was retro-uninstalling a complete office suite. In the presence of a broken registry as to that suite, and as to partial software file copying. Cleansweep got 90+% of the resulting remaining junk out in one run. And Windows ran better for it, and faster.
You only get an advantage with this kind of software if the monitoring porgrams can monitor at install time. Both are good at this, Cleansweep will take huge amounts of time to uninstall if it was not monitoring by analyzing things to incredible depths while analyzing, but is better at this then Ashampoo or other uninstallers when the install has not been monitored. Problem is that DRM can require timings that on a limited resource box might not allow both the monitor and the installer to function right. Office suites are an example, if you install a major suite, running the monitor plus the installer might partially break both of each other-- due to resource limits at the moment.
What an after-the-fact uninstaller has to be able to do to be "careful" is to figure out from the registry what happened during installation if it cannot monitor, and monitoring and logging can take large system resources just at the time installers want the same thing.
Ashampoo uses less system resources, but is not as good as a reconstruct, so as a tech that specializes in complex things with O\Ss and gets under the hood a lot, I favor Norton stuff because of the problems they do not leave behind while doing things most uninstallers or after the fact recoverer utils do not have the capibility of doing.
Most of teh folks I meet as new clients are newbies, and 2\3 of the same-O\S-instances recoveries I do invole knowing under the hood tricks. My job is made easier when folks take some of these things into account when using boxes, that takes teaching. By sharing the do-nots and explaining them, I can tell my clients to look at the nice hosted explanation, as well as hit common errors in uninstalling things.
The funniest thing is, that XP Windows Installer 2 subversion typically is used with CD installers that can also uninstall and many can also repair installs pretty well. This applies to productivity apps, not as much to games, usually. XP is actually better at recovering from user-fubarred legit installs than 98 or ME.
John D.