When you need to understand exactly what programs are doing on your PC then tools such as Process Hacker, Process Explorer or Process Monitor will almost certainly get the job done. They’re compact, powerful, and an excellent aid for all kinds of troubleshooting tasks.
These tools often produce extremely lengthy reports crammed with low-level detail, though, which can be intimidating to some users. And so if you’re looking for something more straightforward, you might be interested in the free Windows Explorer Tracker, as it’s the kind of system monitoring tool which just about anyone can use.
The program focuses on tracking high-level drive, file and folder-based actions: delete, create, rename, insert, add or remove. Which means there’s nothing on file modifications, Registry activities or process actions (launching programs, threads and so on).
And as you might guess from its name, Windows Explorer Tracker is primarily about tracking what’s happening in Explorer. There’s no complexity to it, just launch the program and then watch as your file creates, deletes and so on are listed in a table (though they’re also saved to log files for easy reference later).
In our tests we found Windows Explorer Tracker did record details from some other programs, though, as they worked with temporary files, saved test images and more. And it also successfully recorded the actions of some (though not all) installation programs, handy if you’d like a better idea of what a particular setup tool is doing to your system.
For all this, Windows Explorer Tracker still has only a tiny fraction of the power of the big-name system monitors. If you really want to understand what Explorer is doing then there’s no substitute for learning how to use something like Process Monitor.
If you only need a more basic record of your file and folder-related operations, though, Windows Explorer Tracker certainly delivers, and that could be enough to justify its inclusion in your troubleshooting toolkit.
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