WhatChanged Portable

Every operation you perform on the computer is reflected somewhere in a file or registry entry. Some applications bound themselves this way to ensure functionality, but may cause stability issues through compatibility. To seek down these issues, WhatChanged Portable can run a couple of scan operations and easily identify them.

On the one hand, the name is pretty self-explanatory, at least to let you know there’s no setup involved to make it work. As a direct consequence, it can be stored and used directly from a thumb drive without having any impact on the stability of the target PC, because registry entries are not modified in the process.

Note that running the application in an attempt to find changes which already did harm to your PC doesn’t solve any issues. This is because the application first needs to know what’s on your computer to be able to scan again and tell the difference. As such, it’s best to run an initial scan of files after a fresh install of windows, or before you plan on making any major changes or tweaks to your OS.

There’s quite the variety of details which can be included in the scan process. At least one item is mandatory, and you can choose from fixed or removable drives, as well as any of the system registry hives. Needless to say that the more areas you select, the more changes there are to spot issues later on.

However, there is a downside to the whole operation, which is the scan time. Unfortunately, scanning even a single item on the list can take a considerable amount of time. Be sure to cease all other activities or find something to do while scanners are in motion because it can feel like it takes forever.

To sum it up, WhatChanged Portable is sure to provide accurate results, mostly because of its primitive method of enlisting all items in a text file and comparing on the next scan. If it wasn’t for the extraordinary scan time, the application could have come in handy even for critical situations.