a programs last used date in xp

[techidave]

Not sure if this is doable or not.  But is there a way to find the last used date of installed software on my xp machine?

the default add/remove progrmas in XP doesn't give you this information.  I doubt that the info is accurate anyway.  I have also looked at Revo Uninstaller but it gives installation date but not last used.

it sounds like this may not be possible in XP like it is in Vista/7.

anyone have an idea?

[tomos]

would the last accessed date in windows explorer be trustworthy ?

[techidave]

I am not sure.  I was thinking about something that would scan the system and then report it

[Curt]

I cannot remember right now any program with this feature.

The following tip fetches the info from XP's Start Menu shortcuts (not the Desktop shortcuts):

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I just noticed that the Last Used Date shown for programs in the Add/Remove list does not always agree with what I know to be the case.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

The "Last Used" info is made of a guess work. See what Raymond Chen [MSFT] states:

In order to get the "Last Used" and "Frequency" values, Add/Remove Programs needs to know the name of the EXE so it can ask the Start menu "Hey, how often did the user run this program, and when was the last time it happened?"

Notice that there are no clues in the registration above as to the identity of this EXE file.

So Add/Remove Programs starts guessing. It goes through all the programs on your Start menu and compares their names with the display name of the uninstallable item. It looks for Start menu items which share at least two words with the words in the DisplayName.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general  

..., you can force an update by deleting this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppManagement\ARPCache

General registry editing warning applies. Be sure to have valid backups before deleting the key.
--
Ramesh, Windows XP MVP
http://windowsxp.mvps.org

I followed your tip and the 'last used' list is now updated and makes good sense