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In search of ... universal download tracker

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MilesAhead:
Not here, only shows what IE and those programs that use IE Core services have done - shows nothing done by Pale Moon, (optimised Firefox).  It has a total of three lines in it.
-4wd (November 30, 2011, 07:35 PM)
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What flavor of windows are you running and what are you using to read the index.dat files?

I'm running Windows Seven and it logs everything I download.




FileNotify and FileNotify2

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I still think it uses directory change notification API. I don't see one for individual files.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364417(v=vs.85).aspx

4wd:
Not here, only shows what IE and those programs that use IE Core services have done - shows nothing done by Pale Moon, (optimised Firefox).  It has a total of three lines in it.
-4wd (November 30, 2011, 07:35 PM)
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What flavor of windows are you running and what are you using to read the index.dat files?

I'm running Windows Seven and it logs everything I download.-MilesAhead (November 30, 2011, 08:19 PM)
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Win7HP x64 and that index.dat viewer you linked above.  I've tried opening every index.dat on the system, (total of 18), and it shows the contents as either:
a) empty,
b) a lot of non-URL stuff, or
c) the three lines I mentioned above, which are URL related but which I have never used in Pale Moon.



Everything shows the last change to an index.dat being over an hour ago and I've downloaded files and visited other websites since then.  If, on the other hand, I load up IE and visit a website, index.dat is updated immediately.

FileNotify and FileNotify2
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I still think it uses directory change notification API. I don't see one for individual files.
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I'm not sure if it uses the API for picking up directory changes since it installs its own service but it probably does.  You can specify a filter for a particular file in FileNotify2, (eg. index.dat), within a directory but I haven't used this particular function myself, (only used FileNotify - non .NET version).

MilesAhead:
Don't know what to tell you.  Maybe x64 is different. I'm on 32 bit. Believe me, there's a lot of stuff tracked on my machine. Stuff downloaded not even using http never mind a browser.

edit: yeah, I think it's because the viewer is 32 bit. I just fired up my Vista64 system and it shows less than a dozen entries.  Folder redirection is keeping it from seeing all the index.dat files is my guess.


As for individual file change notification you specify the directory and a filter what changes in the directory will trigger the notification.  The fact that you specify a file only means the code gets the change notification and makes the call ReadDirectoryChangesW() to find out what changed. If it's the file you selected, it fires your action.

If you have 4000 files under that folder and are monitoring all sub-folders I think the disk is going to be busy. It's cheaper just to call FindFirstFile() on a timer.

4wd:
Don't know what to tell you.  Maybe x64 is different. I'm on 32 bit. Believe me, there's a lot of stuff tracked on my machine. Stuff downloaded not even using http never mind a browser.-MilesAhead (November 30, 2011, 08:54 PM)
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Just tried it on my XP Pro 32bit machine - same thing.

Nothing shown in index.dat until I start using IE.

This leads me to believe that just monitoring index.dat would be next to useless unless you can enforce a policy of IE only on the monitored machine and even that would be no guarantee.

I still think URL Snooper, (or similar), is the only way you're going to catch everything.  You either have to monitor the network connection or monitor for every file change/creation and filter - either way will cause a hit of some kind.

edit: yeah, I think it's because the viewer is 32 bit. I just fired up my Vista64 system and it shows less than a dozen entries.  Folder redirection is keeping it from seeing all the index.dat files is my guess.-MilesAhead (November 30, 2011, 08:54 PM)
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The viewer seems to work fine here, if it shows everything that IE, (and IE x64), has done then it's looking at the right index.dat AFAICT - it just doesn't show what any other non-MS API calling program has done.

Also:I've tried opening every index.dat on the system, (total of 18), and it shows the contents as either:-4wd (November 30, 2011, 08:44 PM)
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As a matter of interest, what browser are you using that is causing entries to appear?

MilesAhead:
Evidently the behavior is too inconsistent to be generally useful. Except maybe to MS.

Btw, I just booted XP 32 bit for chuckles. I don't use IE or any browser that uses IE engine. I brought up the viewer. It was empty.  Closed it. Opened Firefox. Did a couple downloads.  Brought up viewer.  Downloads logged. Still running FF 4 on the XP side as I don't boot XP very often.

But that's neither here nor there.

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