How to know all changes after update

[romcab]

Hi guys,

I would like to ask your ideas about the tool I'm planning to create. What i want to do is to know all the files added, modified, deleted after an update (windows update, hotfix, etc). My initial idea is to take a snapshot of the system by getting all files stored in windows and programf files and store in a file. I will then compare it against the new snapshot after an updates. I would like to ask a better way on how to do it.

[Joseph Martell]

The first thing that pops into my head when I read your idea is that it could be very slow as the system ages. I know that my windows folder and program files folder are pretty packed with files at this point and I've been developing on this machine for about 2 1/2 years.

Instead of making a physical backup of all files, you could just store pertinent information in a simple database. You would need file names, sizes, containing folder, and whatever else you wanted to know. This would probably be faster than comparing the entire contents of your backup folder and the real system folders. You could have an insert date for each row so that you could have a history of how files change over time and when new items got added to your system.

To speed up processing further you could store a hash for each folder based on file names and sizes and subfolder names. When the system is updated, you run your hash algorithm again and only if the value is different do you actually compare the contents of a folder to your database to see what changed. This idea assumes that most of the time the hashes for most folders would be the same and therefore save you the slower file-by-file comparisons.

Just a couple of ideas. I'm no efficiency expert though. I'm sure someone else knows other ways of doing this that would have greater returns.

[romcab]

I like the idea of making a hash for each folder. This will saves me more processing time. I'm still considering the database as I think this is just a simple tool, file probably is enough. Thanks for the reply.

[romcab]

this is actually a follow-up question. I'm thinking if windows maintain a log file to keep track new apps installed like the windowsupdates log file.