Regshot – Registry Compare Tool

Been working hard on Windows 7 this week. Specifically group policy stuff.  In the process I’ve been needing to get in and out of the registry comparing keys to see if changes are taking place. I usually use a tool called Prism Deploy (pictaker) to run a check on the registry to look for changes but for simple changes it’s a bit much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Prism fan.  I’ve been using it for years and it’s our main software deployment tool.  However, for this work it’s a bit overwhelming.  I found a cool little tool called regshot at Sourceforge that does the smaller registry compare jobs really well and it seems to run even quicker than Prism.  The tool looks like this:

To make a compare, just run the tool and click on “1st shot”.  Make the registry changes (in my case I do a grpupdate for force group policy changes) and then run “2nd shot”.  When it completes hit the “cOmpare” button and you’ll get a text file or html file of the changes that were made to the registry.  Works well, is stupidly simple and because it’s open source there’s no serial numbers or licensing to worry about.

Enjoy.