> I write about software applications on a regular basis so I know (better than most people) how applications modify the registry. They write serial numbers, file paths and configurations and you usually have no idea what or where they are changing.

Now, this little NirSoft portable application can watch and report what changes your new applications or even Windows is making to your registry.

I’ll teach you how it works but first, you’ll need to download RegFromApp from the Nirsoft website here. It is a portable application so no installation is necessary. Next, you would want to launch the new application or installer that you want to monitor. Then, start up RegFromApp and choose the process.

I decided that I want to see what changes are made when I modify folder options in Windows Explorer.

I choose to monitor Explorer.exe to see what changes are made:

Next, I opened up Windows Explorer and choose Folder Options:

As soon as I did that, data flowed into my registry monitoring app:

I still hadn’t changed anything. So let’s see what happens when I do this:

I unchecked all the top check boxes in Folder Options and instantly, RegFromApp reported my changes:

To you or me, this information does not mean much, but we can export the changes as a .reg file so we can import it into our registry on another machine to duplicate the changes. This is really simple. I stopped the recording by hitting the red square or stop button. And then, hit File Save as.

And I saved the changes to a file called FileOptions.reg. Now, I took this file and ran it on another computer. I instantly got a pop up box asking me if I want to import the settings into the registry. I chose OK and then opened up my Folder Options and bam:

I can see this program coming in VERY handy for lots of things! Do you use a registry monitoring program? If you do share with us in the comments!

Tagged: event monitoring • registry • registry scanner • system monitor