A colleague, Gil Cintron, recently recommended
that I try Epsilon Squared’s
InstallWatch. This free tool scans your PC
before and after an application’s installation
and shows you all the changes (e.g.,
registry key changes, file changes, version
updates) that were made. When I asked
Gil if he had an example of how InstallWatch made his job easier, he had this to
say, “I worked in a lab where we tested applications
for approval to be included as
part of the Navy’s Integrated Shipboard
Network System (ISNS) baseline. Before
an application can be accepted, it has to
meet compatibility and security requirements.
InstallWatch was one of the main
tools we used to keep track of exactly
what each program was trying to do with
our systems. When dealing with defense
and tactical systems, there isn’t any room
for guesswork. InstallWatch did a pretty
good job of eliminating the guesswork.”
To test InstallWatch’s functionality, I
downloaded it from www.epsilonsquared.com and installed it on my PC. As
instructed, I used InstallWatch to take an
initial scan of my PC. I then installed an application
I had lying around. Finally, I used
InstallWatch to take another scan. Both
scans were extremely fast, even on my virtual
machine. InstallWatch then produced
a report showing which files and registry
keys had been added, deleted, or modified.
The InstallWatch reports are stored on the
local hard drive and can be exported to an
HTML or text file for later review.
If you add InstallWatch to the Startup
folder, it can run by itself in the background.
According to the tool’s Help file,
InstallWatch will monitor your system and
make its presence known whenever an
application begins an installation routine.
I found InstallWatch to be extremely
simple to use. It also
works as promised.
Great find, Gil!
—Eric B. Rux, senior
Windows administrator and
cofounder of WHSHelp.com