I like this idea. It would become one of my essentials - first installs on a new system. I'd love a really basic monitoring app that would simply log in a text file various changes including installed apps - with a choice of which events to monitor.
I'm not thinking detailed registry stuff, nor file changes (ala
filehamster). I'm thinking more of logging not only apps installed, updated or uninstalled, but perhaps the creation, renaming or deleting of directories, also of new shortcuts (in startup, desktop, quicklaunch etc) - perhaps "new hardware" and drivers too, and any renaming or remapping of discs or network folders - etc. How about changes in file associations too - more than once in the past I could have done with that being logged! It would ease the stress of everyday organisational tweaking to know that some of these things would be automatically noted and logged, and when dealing with someone else's machine, it could make detective work much easier and faster. No frills - just a plain text log.
Great idea. Perhaps it already exists - I've never looked before..
