Install monitor

In view of the recent 'Starforce Driver' threads (and the issues involved therein) ..

Do you guys know of a program which can detail extactly what changes are made to your system after installing a game/application?

It needs to report:

* registry changes
* all files installed (game folder , system32 folder)
* file associations
* any other modifications

Essentially, a program which can show the differences from a BEFORE install to an AFTER install.

I have WinPatrol running which picks up programs that attempt to change the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Run

For example, Norton Ghost wanted to install Gear software which sounded a bit suspect so I said, "no can do!"

Like where they wrote the copy protection key or the register for how long you've played the demo?

You can probably find some hackers tools to do this, I'm not sure if there is something commercially available.

No. I just want to know what >hidden< stuff is being shoved onto *MY* pc without my knowledge. I'm not interested in hacking. I can see what you mean though.

Too many commercial titles are taking liberties. Installing all sorts of gunk without prior warning.
I've had enough. I'm fighting back.

TeaTimer is pretty good. It's installed along with Spybot S&D if you want it. Dunno if you can get it sepperately. Also sysinternals.com have a rediculous selection of freeware tools for practically any purpose.

System Mechanic can do that. You have to run a scan of your system before and after the install, and then it generates a report showing what changed.

That's the software vendor's problem, as far as I'm concerned. I have a perfect right to know what's been done to MY computer.

I've gone with System Mechanic 6.
It has a lot of other features too. The usual optimise, cleanup, fix, protect stuff. In fact, it picked up a Keylogger (using the Spython tool) which both Spybot and Ad-Aware missed.

One particularly nice feature which can be installed is Right-Click > Defrag
You simply right-click on a game/app and choose the new Defragment option to optimise the loading time of the file.

Many thanks Jams!