Windows File and Registry Monitoring Tools

To find what an application is doing, various monitoring and capture tools are available. These range from the fancy as provided by InstallShield and Wise, to the more simple.

Even if you have access to the upper end, the base utilities can sometimes do things you need.

Check out:

Regmon - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/Regmon.mspx
Filemon - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/filemon.mspx

The "new and improved" replacement for these two older tools is:

Process monitor - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx

So far, I just don't like it as well, but it may help you.

Others include:

Portmon - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/portmon.mspx

This monitors serial and parallel port traffic
Diskmon - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/diskmon.mspx

Debug view - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/debugview.mspx