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Good Freeware System Snapshot Tool For Windows?
Khyber writes "I'm doing a little personal research into a project that tracks what changes get made to your system every time you install a program. I know there are ways of checking through Windows Restore Points, but that's not what I'm trying to do. Instead, I'm going to start with an absolutely fresh Windows XP install, take a full snapshot of the entire installation on the hard drive, and burn that to a DVD (somewhat like a backup disc with an entire snapshot of my hard drive's current contents.) With every program I install, I'm going to take another snapshot, burn to DVD, and repeat the process until I have recreated every step taken to get to my current system state (all programs installed on a separate hard drive, all registry entries etc on the OS drive, with only snapshots of the OS drive being recorded.) The purpose for all of this I'm not legally allowed to talk about, due to confidentiality requirements. Does anybody know of such a program, preferably freeware, that will accomplish my objective, and are there tools that can be used to compare the difference in drive images?"
The best tool I have ever used is Prism Deploy.
It isn't free, but they do have a free trial. I've tried a number of programs to package executable programs and manage Windows images, but nothing has come close.
I'm really interested to see if there are any freeware programs that come close.
The easiest way is to run dual boot Fedora/XP. It will take you all of a couple of hours to install Fedora/Ubuntu/Whatever from a Live CD, partitioning the drive as required during the install. You can then backup the whole Win partition without Windows locking any files and what-not. Another approach is to add in another disk for that purpose, maybe a USB thumbdrive if your OS can boot from it.
The other approach is to use a VM machine. There are some cut-down versions of XP designed to work well in them.
Sounds like a virtual environment is exactly what you need.
Personally, I use Ghost for imaging and if I want to find out what a program is doing, I run sysinternals File Monitor and Registry Monitor. They're real-time and don't record in a nice format but nothing really beats them on Windows. They've helped me diagnose hundreds of horrible modern and ancient installation programs used in an educational environment to allow network installation (why, exactly, do you need write access to C:\WINDOWS to run a Shockwave-based game for toddlers, etc.?).
Linux/Unix has this much easier because it allows you to monitor EVERYTHING without massive binary blobs having settings stored in them, having settings locked to particular machines, etc. or things generally getting in your way. Windows, it's a pain in the proverbial.
Even a lot of the professional MSI-Builders with their "discovery" modes are absolutely useless at working out what was actually a vital change and what was just the installer playing about, or the user changing their screensaver / explorer view preferences while they installed etc. I spend half my life cleaning MSI's of unnecessary cruft and inserting the entries that they miss. About 50% of automated install captures like this are useless for deployment to a different machine.
Basically, despite the "secrecy" around your particular purpose (why did you have to mention that at all... it makes no difference to what you want and adds nothing to our knowledge), it's probably not worth the hassle. Before and after snapshots, or package the programs and MSI's and you'll find out everything you need along the way, with an actual, practical result at the end. Trying to diff a filesystem/registry image in any way is madness and is only useful if you can get a *perfectly* clean machine, a VERY good automated program to do it brilliantly, where you'll end up with a lot of cruft that isn't related to the program installation at all (e.g. event log entries, temporary files, taskbar icons saving their settings etc.).
I would recommend regshot at sourceforge. GPL'd.
Be careful - Acronis restore doesn't work properly with many USB 2.0 external drives.
It defaults to USB 1.1 speed.
Consequently, restores from a USB drive can take literally several days.
Check the Acronis True Image forums for many tales of woe about this.
The answer seems to be to build a BartPE disc with an Acronis plugin, but the exact process is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty.
Norton Ghost is fairly cheap and Ghost Explorer will allow you to "browse" the images. I'm not entirely sure on the comparisons angle.
Trying to make an "alternative system rollback/savestate" program are we?
First, Ghost sucks. Not version 8, which was awesome, but the recent versions, which won't let you run ghost off the damn CD you paid for. No, you have to find an old copy and put that on a USB or other HD to run it from. B-tards.
This guy isn't trying to make his own ghost, he's trying to clone registry keys and serial numbers so he can push a software install. So he's tryign to clone Installshield, but in a way that magically provides great MSI compatibility to installers that don't already have MSI functionality.
AKA the windows tech pipe dream. And I say this after my last post was called an anti-apple troll because I suggested a $299 emachine laptop was "good enough" for most people vs a $1500 macbook :p
Oh and thanks to OP for the FOG link. Hadn't heard of it.
Captcha: atheism - the practice of not believing Steve jobs is God
Take that mods :)
Regsnap from LastBit Software will snapshot the entire registry and system file
lists (if you want it to) and save it out to a file. Once you make your changes
or installations you can snapshot it again and then directly compare the two files
and generate a difference file of all the changes to the system. It's a fairly
useful utility for capturing what installers/applications do to windows based
systems. Unfortunately it's not free.
No kidding. The story seems a bit too much like "do my job for me". It says it's just a "personal research project" but if it really were personal, then there wouldn't be "confidentiality requirements". Maybe this guy's a RIAA/MPAA stooge and wants to more efficiently look for P2P software or something.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
virtualization takes TOO LONG.
I'm going to be demoing this LIVE in court. That's NOT FEASIBLE AT ALL.
I've got most of what I need - I just need a GREP tool for windows. DIR /b /s /a:AHRS > file.txt is fine for almost everything. I need a comparison tool.
Does the command I listed above happen to record filesizes as well? The faster and quicker I can make this happen in court, the better off EVERYONE will be. It's gotta be simple enough for a JURY OF MINDLESS IDIOTS TO UNDERSTAND.
In other words - LINUX, UNIX, etc IS FUCKING USELESS FOR MY REQUIRED TASK.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.