Most Windows programs have to be registered to work properly. Registering means that the files of the application (exe, dll, ocx, etc.) store their information to the Windows registry. Usually, this is done during the installation process, but sometimes you have to do it manually if problems occur.

If an application doesn’t work, the first thing to do is to uninstall it and install it again. This often helps simply because corrupted registry entries have been added again to the registry. If it is a simple program with a couple of DLLs you can just register them manually using the regsvr32 command.

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AcessEnum from Microsoft’s Sysinternals tool collection enables you to list user accesses to a tree of directories or registry keys. With Windows Explorer or a registry editor you can only view access rights for a particular object, a certain folder, for example. If a directory has many subfolders it is difficult to figure out if access rights have been configured properly.

AccessEnum only lists the users and groups who have read or write access and where the deny attribute has been set. In most cases that should be enough though. What I like most about the tool is that it allows you to compare the current configuration with saved settings. This way you can easily find out if someone manipulated access permissions on a certain directory structure. If you right click on a column you can access the folder’s properties and you can also exclude a folder with its subfolders from the list.

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Regedit, the Registry editor that comes with Windows is a rather simple tool. It makes sense to use a third-party tool, even if you only have to edit the Windows Registry every once in a while. RegAlyzer is a free Registry editor with useful features.

My favorite feature is its search functionality. RegAlyzer supports different search criteria such as wildcards, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and even regular expressions. You can also limit your search by date (newer than, older than, between and outside of). However, the latter didn’t work properly when I tested it.

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TrackWinstall is a free tool that informs you about the changes a setup program made to your Windows installation. It shows you what files where added or removed and which files were changed by the setup program. It also lists all Registry changes.

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The Neuber Software Security Task Manager rates the security risk of all running Windows processes. The rating is based on criteria, like the ability to record keyboard inputs, if its files are hidden or if the process could manipulate other programs. All in all, I counted 20 similar criteria. There are also criteria which reduce the rating, for example, if it was signed by Microsoft or if you commented the process.
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If you only edit the registry, every now and then, you probably will get along with the Windows registry editor. However, the more you work in a Windows environment the more you will realize the need to change the registry for many important settings. This is especially true, if you use Group Polices to configure multiple PCs in your network. RegCOPA is a Registry editor, which has some useful features, if you have to access the registry often.

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You probably know that Microsoft validates your Windows XP, every time you install an update. The German magazine PC Professionell (08/06) has an interesting article (print) about recent changes in this validation process. It seems that WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) is now contacting Microsoft daily.

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It seems fashionable lately for every simple program to have a component which starts when the system boots up. Often this is not necessary and just costs valuable memory space. There is another kind of “application” which considers themselves important enough to run all the time: malware i.e. spyware, trojans, computer worms, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to check regularly which programs will start when Windows boots up. Startup Contral Panel and StartupMonitor are free tools which configure and monitor the programs that start when your computer boots up.

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