How to track what setup.exe has installed

Is there a way to track what the setup file has installed? Everything - Registry, files.
Is there a way to track down what kind of files software creates? Cookies & all other files it creates on the system.

user775013

Posted 2011-05-29T09:45:10.997

Reputation:

Yes, random installer, not recovering my own. – None – 2011-05-29T09:49:51.697

Answers

ahem ahem

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

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Hello71

Posted 2011-05-29T09:45:10.997

Reputation: 7 636

You could run the installation in a sandbox (like sandboxie) and see what it has changed. Then you can either reinstall in the live OS or break the application out of the sandbox.

Majenko

Posted 2011-05-29T09:45:10.997

Reputation: 29 007

It's not guaranteed to work, but I have done this before by using a fresh installation of Wine on a Linux machine. Run the installer using Wine and then check out what's happened under ~/.wine/. The registry changes and files installed should mirror exactly what happens on a Windows machine.