History of installed/uninstalled software - List?

[stacygrrl]

Greetings all....

Just wondering if there way of viewing the history of installed and uninstalled applications under Windows XP-Pro. For example, if an application was installed and uninstalled multiple times, I would like to be able to see a record of how many times it was done and when.

I expect that XP tracks this somewhere, but have no clue where to look. Or perhaps there are some 3rd party applications that will do this?

Thanks for your help...

 

[bcastner]

I do not believe there is any record of this by XP. Quite frankly, it has little reason to care. It does track Hotfixes and Service Packs, but not as to the number of time installed/uninstalled.

Many application themselves insert registry entries to check prior installation status. These are non-standard.

For a reasonable summary of installed applications, run the excellent freeware Belarc Advisor:

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

 

[linney]

This just about sums up what information XP stores in the Registry.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1159867,00.asp

 

[Frank4d]

XP tracks all hardware that was ever installed in the computer (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI) but I don't think it tracks software installs. Except if you uninstall software it might leave information in the registry showing that it was installed before but would not show how many times.

 

[micker377]

I hope you're not looking for a way to re-install software after the trial time has expired, you won't find that info here.

 

[linney]

Some History is available via the MsInfo32 tool if you load it via Start/ Run and select View/ System History. To see what history is available, select one of the headings in the left pane and use it in conjunction with the date drop down box.