Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

What do you use to keep track of your installed software?

(1/9) > >>

Perry Mowbray:
Ever since I purchased FirstDefense-ISR from Raxco, which was a little after reading cthorpe's great review, and a little before they decided to stop selling the product, my desire to keep track of my software installations become more important.

Please Note Carl's Update:
UPDATE

Horizon DataSys Inc. has licensed the ISR technology from the original developer and is now selling the program.  From what I can tell, it is identical in every way to the Raxco offering (which was also licensed from the developer) other than it is re-branded.
--- End quote ---

FirstDefense is a great programme (goodness only knows why they decided to pull the plug on sales), and it's saved my bacon a couple of times in my short ownership, but it also gives me the ability to save snapshots of my C Drive at various points in time; presumably with the thought of "re-installing" them at some stage if necessary. But I quickly realised that all those snapshots would be close to useless unless I knew what was in them.

So I put a small Database together (using Access), which keeps track of software installations, version updates, etc, etc. But most importantly, it can show the difference between two snapshots, or the current state and a snapshot. This gives me the ability to automate the "rolling back" to a previous snapshot and re-installing any of the missing software.

But it made me wonder what other people do? I know on my previous computer things got pretty messy.

Just by-the-by: in doing this I discovered a great use for PAD files... It was pretty simple to load in the URL of an Application's PAD file (LaunchBar commander for example) and provide a method from the Database to query the PAD file to see if an update has been released and download it if it has! Essentially that provides an update check not provided in the programme  :)

Perry

Lashiec:
There are programs like Total Uninstall that do exactly what you're achieving with FirstDefense and *gasp* Access. I'm using that, and it's the first thing I install after the SO. jv16 PowerTools Software and Registry Manager are also there to help.

Perry Mowbray:
So with Total Uninstall, if I install and track Programmes A, B and C, and then I want to uninstall Programme B, what happens if Programme C was sort of intertwined with B (maybe directory wise)? I guess I'm wondering how it handles changes to directory structures in between times.

... I find Access to be a really quick environment to build something quickly.

Lashiec:
What happens? Well, the relation between Program B and C gets messed up due to Total Uninstall action. That's a side effect of using the program, and it's mentioned in its help file. But don't worry, most of the times this is something related to a program stealing the file extensions of another one, and this is easily fixed in the "Preferences" panel of most programs.

Not to bash Access, but I thought it was a bit massive to take care of this issue. Totally agree in the quick environment.

Well, it seems that the rest of the members use the computer as a dumping ground ;D

Perry Mowbray:
What happens? Well, the relation between Program B and C gets messed up due to Total Uninstall action. That's a side effect of using the program, and it's mentioned in its help file. But don't worry, most of the times this is something related to a program stealing the file extensions of another one, and this is easily fixed in the "Preferences" panel of most programs.-Lashiec (June 26, 2007, 12:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for clearing that up... I couldn't quite make sense of it after reading the site.
Not to bash Access, but I thought it was a bit massive to take care of this issue. Totally agree in the quick environment.
-Lashiec (June 26, 2007, 12:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

Oh, you're right there about being a bit massive

Well, it seems that the rest of the members use the computer as a dumping ground ;D
-Lashiec (June 26, 2007, 12:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

 ;D ;D I guess it's easy to?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page