Windows – How to see what Windows registry and file system changes happened after a software install

I've had success with Sysinternals Process Explorer. With this, you can search to find what process(es) have a file open, and you can use it to close the handle(s) if you want. Of course, it is safer to close the whole process. Exercise caution and judgement.

To find a specific file, use the menu option Find->Find Handle or DLL... Type in part of the path to the file. The list of processes will appear below.

If you prefer command line, Sysinternals suite includes command line tool Handle, that lists open handles.

Examples

• c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "e:\" (finds all files opened from drive e:\"
• c:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite>handle.exe |findstr /i "file-or-path-in-question"

There are lots of tools capable of this, Windows 2000 was even shipped with a version of wininstall if I'm not mistaken - anyway, it's available for free these days.

The trouble is avoiding false positives - ie changes made by the operating system that was not related to the installer - so some care and manual editing is always needed.