how to capture the changes made by another installer

Hello:

I have an installer for a legacy application that works fine in a real computer and used to work OK in a VM, however, as of late, the installer files are failing to function properly in a VM of any flavor which leads me to believe that the installation files are for whatever reason deteriorating in quality. So my plan to preserve this application's shelf life in my company's archive for employee access is to "capture" the changes the installer makes to the computer in a fresh install using setup builder 10 developer thus repackaging the original installation before it's too late. How would I manage to do this? The original installer was built with InstallShield 5.something.

Hello,

It's not a trivial task at all. You have to monitor all file and registry actions (and OCX self-registration actions, if any). If it is a MSI file then you can try to open it and analyze it. If there is an uninstall .log you can try to find out which actions are logged. But again, not a trivial task. Our Consulting does it on a regular basis but it's a very time consuming process.

Friedrich

Hi,

Google: Search for utility to monitor installations.

Those typically takes a snapshot of your system before installation and after. Then comparing the two you can see what changes are made to your registry and files.

/Poul