Jointly developed by Rational SoftwareÒ and VeriTestÒ, a Service of LionbridgeÒ
Ó1999 Lionbride Technologies, Inc.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Installation Analyzer requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 to operate.
Installation Analyzer (IA) detects changes made to the drives and registry of a Windows system, typically before and after the installation of a product. IA does this by creating “snapshots” of the system both before and after the desired operations, and then performing a comparison of the two snapshots.
The compare operation will generate an HTML report detailing the changes made to the drives and registry. The information will include all added, deleted and changed: files, directories and executables. It will also include all added, deleted and changed: registry entries, 16-bit executables and kernel mode drivers added to the system and extensions properly or improperly added to the system.
Installation Analyzer is designed to be used in conjunction with the Certified for Windows Test Plan from Microsoft and is used by VeriTest personnel in performing certification tests. However, developers may find it useful in a number of situations.
Typically one uses IA by starting with a machine whose Operating System has been freshly installed. The IA files are then placed in their own directory. This directory is ignored in any IA report. The user should then launch IA, and will then be presented with the following screen:
Installation Analyzer refers to “Baseline Snapshots” and “Current Snapshots.” A Baseline snapshot is a previous reference point storing the file and registry information on the machine at that time. The Current snapshot refers to a recently created reference point that will be compared to the Baseline snapshot.
Before a comparison can be made, both a Baseline and Current snapshot must be created and/or loaded.
Initially, the user will select the “Create…” Button in the Baseline Snapshot box. A dialog box will appear that will allow the user to enter the name under which to store the snapshot. Four pre-defined names can be found by clicking the arrow on the combo-box.
After clicking OK, Installation Analyzer will begin to inventory the system. Depending on the speed of the machine, the options selected, the amount of installed memory, and the number of installed applications, the creation of this snapshot could take several minutes. When the snapshot is created, it will be saved to disk and information about the snapshot will be displayed in the Baseline snapshot box.
At this point, the user should exit IA, and perform whatever system altering installations or operations are necessary.
After this has been completed, the user should restart Installation Analyzer, and load the Baseline snapshot. This is done by clicking the “Load…” button in the Baseline box. A dialog box will appear that will allow the user to select one of the existing snapshots. The appropriate one should be chosen, and then the Baseline Snapshot box will present the appropriate information.
Now the user should create the Current Snapshot by clicking on the “Create…” button in the Current Snapshot Box. Once again, a dialog box will appear that will allow the user to enter a name for this snapshot. One of the predefined names can be used by selecting the drop-down on the combo box. Note also that there is a checkbox that will automatically create a report after the new snapshot is generated. In most cases, this checkbox should remain selected.
Note that there is no difference between a Baseline and Current Snapshot; a snapshot being used as Current to generate a report, can be used for a Baseline in a later report.
Note also that reports should be generated as soon as possible after the Current Snapshot. Not all information about changed files is stored in the snapshot; sometimes the files themselves are queried for this information as the report is generated. This means that if files have been changed since the Current Snapshot has been generated, the report may not be reliable.
After the Current Snapshot has been created, a report can be generated, either by selecting the checkbox in the Create Snapshot dialog box, or by using the “Compare…” button.
The Comparison Report generated by Install Analyzer is a simple HTML file, and can be found in the “Results” subdirectory in the Analyzer directory. It can be loaded into an IE5 browser and viewed & printed.
The first section of the report details the eight primary areas of examination necessary for Logo compliance. If any potential problems are detected, they will be mentioned in this section of the report with a clickable link to another section of the report which contains more detailed information.
Please note that these Install Analyzer summaries are not exhaustive, and may generate false positives at certain stages of the testing process. The actual data in the report should always be examined carefully.
Below this summary information is a listing of the number of overall changes found between the two snapshots, with links to specific areas of the reports where these changes can be examined. Below this section can be found the raw data of the report, listing every added/deleted/changed file, directory, executable, registry hive, key & value, along with reports on special sections of the system, such as the program files area of the hard drive, the uninstall section of the registry, as well as listings of installed executables, 16-bit executables, kernel mode drivers, and a good deal of other information besides.
This dialog box appears after requesting the creation of a new snapshot. There are really only two options here. The first is to select a name for the snapshot, and the second is to choose whether a comparison should be done after the snapshot has been created.
Type a meaningful description into the Name field. Pressing the down arrow on the Name combo box will present several names common to stages in the compliance testing process.
If another snapshot has been saved under the name in question, a dialog box will appear asking to confirm the overwrite.
The “Compare After Creation” checkbox will only be active if another snapshot has already been loaded. This will automatically start the creation of a report after the snapshot has been completed. It is identical to pressing the “Compare…” button on the main screen.
After pressing OK, a Progress dialog box will appear showing the number of registry entries & files/directories examined. Depending on the speed, hard drive size, and number of programs installed on a machine, the snapshot creation process could take several minutes.
This dialog box appears after requesting the loading of an existing snapshot. Select one of the available snapshots and press OK.
In order to speed up the creation of snapshots and reports, or to restrict the information in order to better analyze the data, the user can specify that only certain drives or portions of the registry should be examined. These options can be changed in the Tools\Option dialog box.
There are four sections to the options dialog box: Disc Drives, Registry, Extensions and Defaults.
By default, Installation Analyzer will examine all hard drives in the system. This may be excessive for some systems, or there may be reasons to examine additional drives.
There are two ways to select/deselect drives to examine. The first is to click in the “Choose Drives” listbox. To select multiple drives, be sure to use the shift/ctrl keys. The second way to select drives is to select entire groups of drives. Note that there are pictures next to the drives in the “Choose Drives” listbox indicating their type. To the left are four categories, “Hard Drives,” “Removable Drives,” “CD-Roms,” and “Network Drives.” Clicking on one of those boxes will select/deselect all of the drives of that type in the “Choose Drives” box. If only a subset of the appropriate class are selected, the appropriate category check box will show a “partial check.”
By default, Installation Analyzer examines the three most important areas, called hives, of the registry. This can be time consuming, particularly for heavily used systems. IA gives the user the ability to select which sections of the registry to be examined. The first “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” is typically where system-wide information is stored. The second “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” is where user-specific information is generally found. The third “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT” is where extension and OLE registration information is stored. Note that it is not possible to examine Extension registration without gathering HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT information.
By default, Installation Analyzer examines every extension found on actual files and in the registry to see if they are registered according to the App Spec. Both improperly and properly registered extensions are reported. This option turns on/off the analysis of registry information. Note that it isn’t possible to examine registry information without gathering information about the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive.
Usually changes made in the Options dialog box last only until Installation Analyzer is shut down. If it is necessary for these settings to be persistant, then select the “Save Settings” check box before pressing OK. This will set the current settings as the new defaults.