Track Registry Changes When Installing Software
Karina Edling
I am using StartAllBack to customize my Win11, but I would like to switch to Start11. The thing is SAB has a feature where it colorizes even dialog windows like copy/move dialogs and errors and I would like to keep those. I am pretty sure SAB just edits a few registry entries and I would like to identify which ones. I tried Event Viewer but I did not find anything, probably used it wrong. Any tips on identifying these changes?
Use a tool such as free Nirsoft's RegistryChangesView or Sysinternals' Process Monitor to capture the state of the registry before installing SAB and after its installation, and use the tool to "diff" the two to see only changes. There are more alternatives to those tools.
I'm solving a problem - I'm installing software on Windows and it makes the system unstable for some reason. Windows starts crashing soon after. I want to know what changes it made to the registry and also to the file system.
Does anyone know a tool that I can use to snapshot state of the file system and registry? Like all the keys, and files on the file system. Then after I install software I'd like to diff the new registry and the old (and also the file system) to get more ideas about what could be going wrong.
You could run Sysinternals Process Monitor which allows monitoring file system, registry and process/thread activity in real-time. You can also set filters that allows you to monitor just the installer, which helps to rule out changes made by other processes.
Whenever you uninstall the software from the Windows Operating System, it is not guaranteed that all its supported files and registries will also be removed. Some of them remain in your system. These files are unnecessary and occupy unused space or memory in your system. Therefore, you must keep track of all the additional files on your computer. There are several software programs that offer this functionality. They will keep track of all files before and after the installation of the software, and notify you that these files are from that particular application. Therefore, you may take any action according to your needs.The following are software that monitors your system for file and registry changes. Tip: You can also create a backup/clone of your system using the image software.
Once MultiMon has been downloaded, you will need to run its exe file in order to install it on your computer. As soon as the installation is complete, a window will appear asking you what you would like to monitor and which drive. Once you click the play button, all the results will be displayed. The output can also be exported in text format. Multimon takes snapshots of the entire Registry.You should click the play button before installing the new software and after installing it so you have both the snapshots and you can see which files and Registry entries have been changed in the meantime.
InstallWatch ProYou may also use InstallWatch to monitor your files. It works quite the same as RegShot. It provides 2 points and then compares the changes between these two points.Using this software, you can identify, detect, and track changes made to files and directories in great detail. The displayed results are very easy to read. The app will prompt you to take a snapshot before and after analyzing the snapshot. The results will be displayed in either HTML or text. Using the results, you can see exactly which Registry settings have been changed.
A very useful tool, it first scans your entire computer and tracks any changes made to files, registry entries, installed programs, system services, running processes, and opened UDP and TCP ports.Download SysTracer from hereInitially, it will scan your computer. It is necessary for you to select the files that you wish to scan with it. Then it will create a binary image file, known as a snapshot.
Process MonitorProcess Monitor is a real time monitoring tool used to monitor files and the registry. It comes with some advanced features. It scans the system in real time and shows you the changes that occurred in the Registry and Files of System.In addition to detecting and correcting any errors in the Windows Registry, it also fixes them. This is a free tool.
Download Process Monitor form hereRegistryChangesViewRegistryChangesView allows you to take a snapshot of the Windows Registry and compare different snapshots. You can also compare your saved Registry snapshots and the snapshots in the Windows Shado Copy.
System Monitor (Sysmon) is a Windows system service and devicedriver that, once installed on a system, remains resident across systemreboots to monitor and log system activity to the Windows event log. Itprovides detailed information about process creations, networkconnections, and changes to file creation time. By collecting the eventsit generates usingWindows Event CollectionorSIEMagents and subsequently analyzing them, you can identify malicious oranomalous activity and understand how intruders and malware operate onyour network. The service runs as aprotected process,thus disallowing a wide range of user mode interactions.
On Vista and higher, events are stored inApplications and Services Logs/Microsoft/Windows/Sysmon/Operational, and onolder systems events are written to the System event log.Event timestamps are in UTC standard time.
The process creation event provides extended information about a newlycreated process. The full command line provides context on the processexecution. The ProcessGUID field is a unique value for this processacross a domain to make event correlation easier. The hash is a fullhash of the file with the algorithms in the HashType field.
The change file creation time event is registered when a file creationtime is explicitly modified by a process. This event helps tracking thereal creation time of a file. Attackers may change the file creationtime of a backdoor to make it look like it was installed with theoperating system. Note that many processes legitimately change thecreation time of a file; it does not necessarily indicate maliciousactivity.
The network connection event logs TCP/UDP connections on the machine. Itis disabled by default. Each connection is linked to a process throughthe ProcessId and ProcessGuid fields. The event also contains the sourceand destination host names IP addresses, port numbers and IPv6 status.
The driver loaded events provides information about a driver beingloaded on the system. The configured hashes are provided as well assignature information. The signature is created asynchronously forperformance reasons and indicates if the file was removed after loading.
The CreateRemoteThread event detects when a process creates a thread inanother process. This technique is used by malware to inject code andhide in other processes. The event indicates the source and targetprocess. It gives information on the code that will be run in the newthread: StartAddress, StartModule and StartFunction. Note thatStartModule and StartFunction fields are inferred, they might be emptyif the starting address is outside loaded modules or known exportedfunctions.
The RawAccessRead event detects when a process conducts readingoperations from the drive using the \\.\ denotation. This techniqueis often used by malware for data exfiltration of files that are lockedfor reading, as well as to avoid file access auditing tools. The eventindicates the source process and target device.
File create operations are logged when a file is created or overwritten.This event is useful for monitoring autostart locations, like theStartup folder, as well as temporary and download directories, which arecommon places malware drops during initial infection.
This event logs when a named file stream is created, and it generatesevents that log the hash of the contents of the file to which the streamis assigned (the unnamed stream), as well as the contents of the namedstream. There are malware variants that drop their executables orconfiguration settings via browser downloads, and this event is aimed atcapturing that based on the browser attaching a Zone.Identifier "mark ofthe web" stream.
This event is generated when a process executes a DNS query, whether the resultis successful or fails, cached or not. The telemetry for this event was addedfor Windows 8.1 so it is not available on Windows 7 and earlier.
A file was deleted. Additionally to logging the event, the deleted file is alsosaved in the ArchiveDirectory (which is C:\Sysmon by default). Under normaloperating conditions this directory might grow to an unreasonable size - seeevent ID 26: FileDeleteDetected for similar behavior but without saving thedeleted files.
This event is generated when an error occurred within Sysmon. They canhappen if the system is under heavy load and certain tasks could not beperformed or a bug exists in the Sysmon service, or even if certain securityand integrity conditions are not met. You can report any bugson the Sysinternals forum or over Twitter(@markrussinovich).
Configuration files can be specified after the -i (installation) or-c (installation) configuration switches. They make it easier todeploy a preset configuration and to filter captured events.
The configuration file contains a schemaversion attribute on the Sysmontag. This version is independent from the Sysmon binary version andallows the parsing of older configuration files. You can get the currentschema version by using the "-? config" command line. Configurationentries are directly under the Sysmon tag and filters are under theEventFiltering tag.
Event filtering allows you to filter generated events. In many casesevents can be noisy and gathering everything is not possible. Forexample, you might be interested in network connections only for acertain process, but not all of them. You can filter the output on thehost reducing the data to collect.
The onmatch filter is applied if events are matched. It can be changedwith the onmatch attribute for the filter tag. If the value is"include", it means only matched events are included. If it is set to"exclude", the event will be included except if a rule match. You canspecify both an include filter set and an exclude filter set for eachevent ID, where exclude matches take precedence.
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