Advanced Registry Tracer

Windows registry, as we know, is a database repository of the system’s configuration. This includes everything from user profiles to the software installed, to what hardware exists on the system and other properties. Anything you do on the OS gets reflected in the system registry. So if anything goes wrong with the registry, your complete system could go for a toss. The Advanced Registry Tracer or ART, as the name suggests, keeps track of your registry. Software developers can use it while developing a project to keep track of all registry entries they make. Normal computer users will also find it useful to uninstall unwanted or bad software.

We tested the utility on a Windows 98 machine, but it’s compatible with all versions of Windows, including the latest XP. It can track all registry changes due to software or hardware installations/uninstallations by taking snapshots of the registry. We tested this by taking a snapshot of the registry as soon as ART was installed and another after installing another software. It took a few seconds to complete, and it displayed the differences in a separate window making it easy to analyze the changes.

This could come handy while debugging specific applications and software. Comparisons can be performed for either the entire registry or specific registry keys. An important feature of the registry tracer is that you can easily undo or redo changes based on the results after comparison. Undo allows you to easily rollback the registry changes made due to incomplete or incorrect installations or due to any other change that has resulted in an error or problem in your PC. The whole process is quite easy to perform. Registry navigation commands like expand and collapse make it quite user friendly. Certain keys can be excluded from being compared using Exclude from Comparison/Bookmark from the menu. ART also has a case-sensitive search facility, which allows to search and then make changes by directly jumping to Regedit. Jump to Regedit button in the toolbar allows users to directly view or change a key in
Regedit. 

The Bottom Line: This is a good utility to keep your Windows registry clean of unwanted applications that don’t uninstall properly, and to help software developers with their troubleshooting.

Rashmi Sahu at PCQLabs