A utility to know what is wrong with your Windows?

On my Amiga, I used (and sometimes still use) a program called SnoopDos. What it does is to show what your computer is doing and whether it succeeds or fails at doing something.

So for example if a program wants to receive something from the 7777 UDP port but can't, it appears in SnoopDos telling me that receiving data from 7777 UDP port failed.

Or for example when running a program if the program needs xxx.library version 24 but I have the version 22 of that library installed inside my LIBS: assign, I can see that trying to open that version 24 of the library failed because there is an older version. Like these:




It tries to open elusive.library from memory and fails. Then it tries to load the library from the universal LIBS: assign and fails again, finally tries to load this library from program's directory and fail.

Is there such a simple utility for Windows7 x64? So that for example if a game fails to load because of some expected registry entries missing from my registry, I can see which registry entries those are and add them manually?

I don't know of any games that rely on the registry to launch. Modern games don't use it because it's pointless, they have their own options files for that. Older games existed before the registry, so they don't use it.

A tool like that seems to do what Windows does automatically.

Splintert said:

I don't know of any games that rely on the registry to launch. Modern games don't use it because it's pointless, they have their own options files for that. Older games existed before the registry, so they don't use it.

A tool like that seems to do what Windows does automatically.

Click to expand...

Almost all of the software including modern ones still relies on one thing or another and registry is only one of them.

So how do I watch this log file which Windows is keeping to understand what is wrong?

The game or OS will tell you what is missing. A quick Google search will tell you what to install.

Splintert said:

The game or OS will tell you what is missing. A quick Google search will tell you what to install.

Click to expand...

No Windows does not tell me what's missing. For example a game downloaded from Origin does not have it's serial number entered in registry and because of that I'm having a problem. The operating system is not telling me what's wrong and I don't know what registry values to create in order to fix this problem.

There are tons of modern software that might simply crash without telling me what the problem is. If I knew what the problem is, I can try fixing it myself. The same can be said about Windows itself. Because I have no such tool available, the best option usually is to reinstall Windows without knowing what the problem really was. There is no guarantee that you won't install the software that was causing the problem in the first place.

Take a look at Proc Mon (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx) it might do some of what you're looking for, although to be honest it's probably quicker to track down the log file of the game or have a quick look through event viewer for any sign of errors.

Splintert said:

I don't know of any games that rely on the registry to launch.

Click to expand...

I can think of at least one game which stores your product key in registry, it's made by a company called taleworlds, have you heard of them? 

The game will run without any serial key in the registry.

Ancalimon is concerned about programs that simply cannot run without.

For the network detection; the program would never see why a program is being blocked. It might be able to see that a program is listening on x port, but the router will do all of the blocking and allowing outside of the utility's view. The utility would not know any messages were received.

Fiddler2 will tell you if traffic is failing. The event viewer (type "event viewer" in the start menu or Run box) may give you information on program crashes.

Your router/firewall may have a real-time log you can see as well