Before we get to the good stuff, like explaining what What Changed does and how to use it, I need to explain that you are being offered What Changed on a one month trial basis. You may use it for one month at no charge. After one month, What Changed will stop working until you pay for it. For more information on registering What Changed, click on the Register menu at the top of the main What Changed window. You will see a Registration screen containing information on how to register. You also can print out a registration form by clicking on the Print button on this window. You can register by mail, or by email or phone using a credit card (be sure to include your serial number from the top of the registration window.) Once you have registered, you will be sent an unlock number that will cause What Changed to work indefinitely. It also will cause What Changed to stop displaying the nag screens and other requests for money.
*What is What Changed?*
What Changed is a utility that will take a snapshot of your hard drive and, at a later date, compare your current hard drive with that snapshot. It reports in detail all files and/or directories that have been added or deleted. It also reports any files that already existed but have been changed. To look for changes in files, What Changed looks for changes in either length or time/date stamp of files. It also gives a detailed description of any changes that have occurred in the AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI files. In addition, What Changed will automatically back to a floppy or ZIP drive up any files that have been added or modified since the snapshot. You can, if you wish, keep multiple snapshots, allowing you to compare your current hard drive with various times in the past.
What Changed has many uses. Among these are:
1) Maintaining periodic backups of your hard drives. You can take a snapshot of your hard drives, and later have What Changed back up all files that have been added or changed on any of your hard drives since you made the snapshot. When you have backed up these files, you can then make another snapshot, overwriting your previous snapshot, and you are ready to make another backup in another week or so, and so on.
2) Tracking changes that occur in your system when you install a new program or make similar changes in your system. The report that What Changed gives on changes in your AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI, and SYSTEM.INI files can be particularly interesting. Being able to view what changed when you installed or upgraded a program can be very useful if you suddenly find that things are not working properly on your system after the installation. For example, often after you install a new program, you will find that another program that was working perfectly suddenly is no longer working. This can be because the program you installed overwrote some shared file with an incompatible version. Using What Changed to identify the changes that occurred in your system can be very useful in repairing the damage.
3) Checking your system for viruses. Since a virus infecting a file can change either the size or date of the file, the report given by What Changed can help you check your system for viruses. You should be particularly careful if you find changes in normally stable files like COMMAND.COM or WIN.EXE.
4) Checking your system for corrupted files. If you find that a program is suddenly not working properly, you can check to see if there has been a sudden change in any files associated with that program that might indicate that it has become corrupted.
5) Monitoring use of your computer when you are not present. If you think someone has been using your computer without your permission, you can make a snapshot when you leave the computer and then view changes when you come back. This can be useful, for example, to make sure your kids are not using your computer without permission.
*Using What Changed*
When you run What Changed, you will see the main window. This contains buttons for the three main functions: Record Snapshot, Report Changes, and Exit. There is also a top menu bar containing the Files, Help, and Register menus. Besides the Record Snapshot, Report Changes, and Exit functions, the Files menu also contains a Delete Snapshot File option that can be used to delete back copies of snapshot files. The Help menu contains the Instructions and About options, which display this instruction file and display current version information on the program, respectively.
The Register function is explained above. The other options are explained as follows:
*Record Snapshot*
This is the function that will create a file containing information on your current hard drive. When you select this option, What Changed will display a Snapshot Parameter window asking for information used in creating the snapshot.
The top item in this window is an input box that allows you to input a label for this snapshot. If you have recorded more than one snapshot file, when you use the Report Changes function, What Changed will present you with a list of the labels of the snapshot files and allow you select which one you wish to compare to the current hard disks. The label is only used to allow you to identify the various snapshots, so what you use as a label is not important, and long as you understand it. The default is simply the date and time you created the snapshot. If you want something more descriptive, you can input a new label into this text box. For example, if you are about to install a new program and you want to monitor the changes that occur during this installation, you could label the snapshot something like "My computer before installing XYZ program."
The next thing on the Snapshot Parameter window is a check box asking if you want to save the snapshot you already have as a back file when you create this new snapshot. This box appears only if you have already created a snapshot. If this box is checked, What Changed will save your existing snapshot as an old snapshot file. This will allow you to still use this snapshot to compare with your present hard drive, even though it is not the most recent.
The middle of this Snapshot Parameter window contains check boxes for all the disk drives on your computer except the A and B floppy drives. You can check all the drives you want included in the snapshot. All the drives that What Changed has determined to be hard drives will already be checked. Drives which What Changed believes should not be included in the snapshot, such as ZIP drives or CD drives that contain changeable disks, will not be checked. However, it is possible for What Changed to misinterpret a drive type. If any boxes next to hard drives names are not checked, you might want to check them by clicking on the box beside the drive name. Likewise, you may remove the checks from any drives that you do not want included in the snapshot. Reducing the number of drives included in the snapshot will reduce the time required both to record the snapshot and to look for changes in the hard drives later.
When you have set all the parameters the way you want them, press ENTER or click on the Ok button. What Changed will then record the snapshot and return to the main menu window. If you already had a snapshot file and you checked the "Save current snapshot as back file" box, What Changed will save your previous snapshot file "SNAPSHOT.DAT" with a name such as "SNAPSHOT.001".
*Report Changes*
When you select this option, What Changed will display the "Select reports to display" window. This displays a series of check boxes for various reports, such as "Directories added", "Files added", "Files changed", "AUTOEXEC.BAT changed", and so on. By default, these are all checked, meaning that What Changed will report on all of these. However, if you are not interested in some of these, you can get your report faster by clicking on the box to uncheck that function.
If you have back snapshot files as well as the current snapshot, What Changed will display a list of all snapshot file in a list box. The current snapshot file will be listed simply as "Current". All other snapshot files will be identified by the label you gave them when you created the snapshot file. You can click on the snapshot file that you want to compare to your current system. The default is the current file.
Once you have selected the reports you want to have and the snapshot file you want to use for the comparison, What Changed will compare your current system with the snapshot file. The comparison may take a minute or so. When it is finished, you will see a Report window.
This window reports how many files and directories were removed, how many were added, and how many files were modified. It also reports whether AUTOEXEC.BAT was changed, WIN.INI was changed, and so on.
If the number of files or directories added, removed, or modified was greater than zero, there will be a "Details" button next to that item. Likewise, if a control file (AUTOEXEC.BAT, WIN.INI, etc.) was changed, there will be a Details button beside that report. Clicking on the Details button will cause a more detailed report on that type of change to appear in the report box near the bottom of the Report Window. For example, if you click on the Details button next to the "Files modified" report, the report box will list all the files that were modified. For each file, it will show the old and new size, and the old and new latest modification time and date. Clicking on the Details button for Files added will display a list of files added since the snapshot was taken. New files that are in new directories (directories that were added since the snapshot) will be marked with an asterisk. Note: What Changed ignores TMP and SWAP files, since these are temporary files of no importance.
Once you have displayed a detailed report in the report box, the Print button at the bottom of the Report Window will become enabled. Clicking on this button will dump the contents of the report box to your printer. You will need to print a separate report on each type of change you want printed. For example, if you want a printed report on files added and files modified, you would need to click on the Details button for the Files added report, then the Print button, then the Details button for the Files modified report, then the Print button again. This allows you to print only those reports you really want.
If you asked for reports on files added and/or files modified and What Changed found any such files, the Backup button will be enabled. Clicking on this will begin the process of automatically backing up all added or modified files. Since What Changed will automatically try to find a drive with a removable disk in it and make it the default backup drive when you select this option, it is best to have already inserted a disk into your ZIP, JAZZ, or floppy drive before you click on the Backup button. Otherwise, you will need to insert a disk later and then select that drive to copy files to.
When you begin the backup process, you will see the Backup window. This window contains a list of files added or modified since the snapshot. Files that are in new directories will be marked by an asterisk. Files that are not new but were modified will be marked by a double asterisk. If you see any files in this list box that you do not want to back up, you can click on the file name to mark it. Marked files, indicated by a blue line through them, will not be backed up.
The Backup window also contains a list box of drives on your system that you can use as your backup drive. A JAZZ or ZIP drive is preferable, although a floppy or even a read/write CD will do. You are not allowed to select any drive that you are also backup up from. For example, if you have a D hard drive and some of the files you are backing up are on the D drive, you cannot select the D drive as your backup drive.
During the backup process, some problems can occur. The most likely are that your backup drive does not have enough space to save the file you are currently backing up, and that the file you are backing up is locked by Windows (Permission denied error). The Backup window has two error reporting check boxes. The first is for the "Insufficient disk space" error message, and the second is for all other errors. If the box for each type of error is checked, What Changed will pause and display an error message when it encounters that type of error, otherwise, it displays no error message. In either case, What Changed will proceed on to the next file to be backed up when it finds that it cannot back up a certain file. The default is to not display the error messages, since the backup will go faster if it does not have to pause each time it has trouble with a file.
As What Changed copies each file to the backup disk, it will remove that file from the list on the Backup Window. If all goes perfectly, the list box will be empty after the backup and What Changed will return to the Report Window. If any files were not copied because of insufficient disk space, however, What Changed will ask if you want to make another pass at backing up the remaining files. If you want to, you can insert a new disk and click on the Yes button. What Changed will then attempt to backup the remaining files in the list. This process will repeat until either all files that have not been backed up due to insufficient disk space have been copied, or you say that you do not want to try to back up any more.
When What Changed backs up files, it recreates the directory structure for those files on the backup disk. For example, suppose you had a new or modified file in the
C:\Program Files\XYZ Program\Data
directory. What Changed would create a
\Program Files
directory on the backup disk, then a
\Program Files\XYZ Program
directory, then a
\Program Files\XYZ Program\Data
directory on the backup disk. It would then copy the new or modified file into this directory. It would do this even if there were no new or modified files to be copied into the
\Program Files
directory or the
\Program Files\XYZ Program
directory. This allows you to easily find any files you need to restore from your backup disk. Note that What Changed does not record information on which hard drive the directory structure was originally on if the files came from several separate hard drives. It assumes that you can tell which hard drive had a \Windows directory and which one had a \WP\Data directory, for example.
*Delete Snapshot file*
This main screen option, which is found under the Files menu, allows you to delete one or more of the back snapshot files you have created. Just select Delete Snapshot file under the Files menu, and you will see a list of labels for your old snapshot files. (You cannot delete the Current snapshot file.) Either double click on the one you want to delete, or select the one you want to delete and then press ENTER or click on the Delete button. You may repeat this process with as many old snapshot files as you want to delete. When you are finished, press Esc or click on the Cancel button.
*Exit*
This option exits What Changed.
*Hard copy*
If you want a printout of these instructions, you can load the WHATCHAN.TXT file in your Windows directory into NotePad or WordPad and select the Print option under the Files menu.
*Uninstalling What Changed*
If you decide you do not want to keep What Changed, you can delete the entire C:\WHATCHAN directory from your C: drive. You also need to delete the What Changed.lnk file from your hard drive. The location of this file will depend on where you selected to put it direct the setup process.
*Tech Support*
If you have any questions about What Changed that you cannot find answered in this manual, you can send email to Leithauser@aol.com. You can also call Leithauser Research at (904) 738-0418, preferably between the hours of 11 AM and 5 PM Eastern time. You can also send snail mail to:
Leithauser Research
3624 Royal Fern Circle
DeLand, FL 32724
To check to see if you have the latest version of What Changed, or to look over other shareware by Leithauser Research, check out our Web page at
