A simple tool to capture snapshots of the state of one more registry keys, then compare them for differences. Includes both an easy to use GUI and CLI clients.
As with many of my tools, this was put together in a hurry, used for its intended purpose then essentially forgotten about. Bugs are likely to be present and performance could be improved. Caveat emptor!
regcmp.exe- This is a console based command line client, useful for automated testing and scripting scenariosregcmpui.exe- This is a GUI that allows easy collection, viewing and comparing of snapshots
The command line client supports the following arguments
| Argument | Description |
|---|---|
| /nologo | Do not display the startup banner and copyright message. |
| /key | The full name of a key to snapshot. Can be specified multiple times. |
| /name | The name of the snapshot, and used as the output file name. |
| /addtimestamp | Adds the current date and time to the snapshot name. |
Arguments without names are treat as input files for comparisons.
All input and output paths are relative to the startup directory.
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Success |
| 1 | Invalid parameters |
| 2 | A compare operation found differences |
| 255 | The program failed with an error |
A selection of sample snapshots can be found in the
snapshotsfolder of this repository
This example creates a snapshot named software and containing the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE keys. The name will also have the current date and time appended to it.
regcmp.exe /key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE" /key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE" /name software /addtimestamp
This example will compare the snapshot test_delsubkey.rge against test_base.rge
regcmp.exe test_delsubkey.rge test_base.rge
Comparing a pair of snapshots using the CLI tool
Comparing the same snapshots using the GUI tool
Capturing a new snapshot using the CLI tool
Viewing a snapshot using the GUI tool