The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

This forum post should ideally be added to the FAQ.

Has anyone's setup changed? I'm looking at moving to Sandboxie (away from my custom VirtualBox setup) and I was wondering what to use for comparing registry entries and files?

Nothing beats RegShot Unicode 2.0.1.70
http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2505

Does before and after registry comparison - along with producing REDO.reg and UNDO.reg files.
Does before and after file comparison. (very fast if in Options>Common Options you select only checkbox "Check files in specified folders" which means only compare via filesize. Of course if you instead choose to compare via CRC32 or MD5 then it takes more time.)

Steps:
2. Run RegShot Unicode 2.0.1.70 (this version has both registry change detection and file change detection capability).
3. In RegShot Options > Common Options Tab - check "Check files in the specified folders", uncheck "Using CRC32 contents", uncheck "using MD5 contents".
4. In RegShot Options > Folders Tab - remove all entries in "Checked Objects" and then right click > Add > C:\
5. RegShot - 1st Shot > Whole Registry
6. RegShot - 1st Shot > Save (make sure it is Save and not Save As) > enter filename beforeappname.hive
7. Close RegShot (optional, only required if you need to restart computer)
8. Install Application to test.
9. Run RegShot again, 1st Shot > Open > beforeappname.hive
10. RegShot - 2nd Shot > Whole Registry - an automatic comparison should now be triggered between the before and after state of your hard drive and registry.
11. Now you can see the registry keys and files that have been changed in an HTML report. You also have a Redo.reg and Undo.reg file made for you automatically.

Sandboxie + Windows Registry Recovery + PeStudio + a tiny bit of experience... Not foolproof, though...

joby_toss, what is Windows Registry Recovery? Thanks

It's a MiTeC software: http://www.mitec.cz/wrr.html

guinness wrote:Has anyone's setup changed? I'm looking at moving to Sandboxie (away from my custom VirtualBox setup) and I was wondering what to use for comparing registry entries and files?

I'm mostly using ZSoft Uninstaller because too often there will be registry/disk entries that I want to know about as well as quickly delete.

joby_toss wrote:Sandboxie + Windows Registry Recovery + PeStudio + a tiny bit of experience... Not foolproof, though...

Thanks, WRR was what I was looking for.

webfork wrote:I'm mostly using ZSoft Uninstaller because too often there will be registry/disk entries that I want to know about as well as quickly delete.

I will check this out as well.

I found that my VB has become corrupted from updating VB over the years and using Sandboxie with SystemExplorer on Windows 7 is so slow and creates a large amount of CPU usage when taking a snapshot. I'm looking for alternatives for now.

Like joby_toss (and I guess I am Baas) I too am using the Sandboxie + Windows Registry Recovery combo, plus searching through the Sandboxie directory structure for new folders.

guinness wrote:Like joby_toss (and I guess I am Baas) I too am using the Sandboxie + Windows Registry Recovery combo, plus searching through the Sandboxie directory structure for new folders.

Very close.

I used to use the freeware InCtrl5. I even built my own program that prepares uninstallers based on the leftovers which InCtrl5 found.
InCtrl5 is the best checker I've found because it offers a unique combination of:

• Registry comparison of before/after
• File checker of before/after
• Registry filters! Without them you get too many unrelated entries and/or loops

But I wrote "used" because it's an abandonware that's not supported in anything above Windows XP.
It does work in compatibility mode, if you still want to try it...

lwc wrote:But I wrote "used" because it's an abandonware that's not supported in anything above Windows XP.

Bummer. There's a very warm review of the program over at PCMag from way back when: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,25198,00.asp

Well, it's their program, you know...

But in this case, it really is a shame there's no XP+ update.