Registry Watch

All important changes to the system leave traces in the registry, and most applications you install do the same. Some might have a significant impact on overall functionality, and can cause compatibility issues. In this regard, Registry Watch provides the opportunity to take snapshots of the system registries in order to analyze changes and see what might be the cause of some problems.

Once installed, you’re free to run the application to check out the set of features, but be sure to run it with administrator privileges so that it has the necessary clearance to access registries. Don’t worry, no changes are made to registries, since the application only reads those you point at.

The visual design is a custom-made interface that wants to make it easy to figure out what and how needs to be done, with somewhat intuitive buttons for general operations, but you need to hover the mouse over each to see what they do, because there’s no actual description or tag other than the balloon popup on mouseover.

Registry Watch first needs to take a look at the system registries, after which you’re free to repeat the steps that caused possible issues. However, you might want to back up the whole registry pack, with a built-in function just for this.

The second snapshot needs to be taken after the malicious process is put in motion, so the application can identify changes. The result is shown in a new window, with the possibility to jump to those specific keys. Both snapshots can be opened in the default text editor, since they’re saved as log files.

Taking everything into consideration, we can safely state that Registry Watch is a practical application to keep around, especially if you know you have to do with potentially dangerous applications that need to modify system registries. There’s a backup options in case something goes wrong. What’s more, the application doesn’t modify registries, with the default editor brought up to take matters into your own hands.