Apr 14

CyberNotes: Monitor File And Registry Changes When Installing Applications

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Many times I am skeptical about installing new applications because I don’t know what they will end up doing to my computer. Will they install some spyware, delete some of my system files, or corrupt my registry? You just never know what the result is going to be but if you don’t try out new applications then you could be missing out on some great tools.

When I install certain applications I want to know everything that went on during the installation process. That way if I choose to uninstall the program later I’ll know exactly what it had created or modified. To do the monitoring I use InCtrl5 which is a small freeware program.

Here is what you need to do to use InCtrl5:

  1. Download and install InCtrl5.
  2. Start InCtrl5 and browse/enter the location of the install file:
    InCtrl5 Start
  3. After you have entered the location of the install file, selected the desired options, and pressed the “Go!” button the application will scan your computer so that it knows what is in your registry and file system for comparison purposes:
    InCtrl5 Pre-Install
  4. After the pre-installation check completes you should see the installation window for the program you are trying to install. In my case I chose Flock and after the Flock installation completed I pressed the “Install Complete” button in the upper-right corner of the screen. It then started to check the files and registry for any changes:
    InCtrl5 Post-Install
  5. When InCtrl5 finishes the examination it will present you with a report that is nicely organized:
    InCtrl5 Report

I don’t use this for every program that I install but it does come in handy every now and then. I typically use it if there is a possibility that I’ll uninstall the application later on because I don’t want things cluttering my computer that I know I can get rid of easily. You probably won’t want to use InCtrl5 for every program you install because it does take around a minute to for each the pre-install and post-install analysis. Sometimes it is worth the few extra minutes though.

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