
                             SYSLOG 3.2
                             ==========


What is it?

     SYSLOG is a program that keeps an eye on your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.

     Have you ever noticed that each time when you try out some new Windows 
     program, your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory will become a little bit bigger? Or 
     have you ever seen programs complaing about the fact that some DLL file is 
     no longer the correct one, like it used to be?

     The reason for this is that many Windows programs copy all kinds of files 
     into the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. In many cases they don't even look 
     whether these files are already there or not. In that case they just 
     overwrite the previous version. This can be very annoying...

     When I upgraded to Windows 95, I hoped that Microsoft would have built 
     something into their operating system which could sort of protect the 
     WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. But unfortunatly this wasn't the case.

     So I decided to write a program that would log any changes to this 
     direcory. In my opinion, SYSLOG is something that Microsoft forgot to 
     include in their operating system.


How does it work?

     The first time you run SYSLOG, the program builds a list of all the files 
     in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory (or whatever you may have named your 
     WINDOWS directory).

     Any next time you run it, it will report the files that have been removed, 
     added or changed since the last time you ran the program. SYSLOG keeps a 
     logfile called SYSLOG.LOG.


How do I use it?

     You might want to use it any time you install or remove Windows software.
     Or you could include it in the 'Startup' folder, to automaticly run it any
     time you start Windows.

     You can change some options by editing the SYSLOG.INI file, using notepad
     or another plain text editor. Options in the form "option=1" will be
     selected, those in the form "option=0" will not be selected. Options that
     can be changed are:

     - comment      If selected the program will prompt you for comment which
                    will be included in the logfile. For example you could enter
                    the name of the software, if you ran syslog after an
                    installation. (default=1)

     - dir=name     With this option you can add more subdirectories under the
                    windows directory that will be checked.

     - excl=name    With this option you can feed SYSLOG some names of files of
                    which changes should never be logged. Use this for files
                    which change very often and which you don't care about.
                    Apart from these entries, also changes to any *.GRP file are
                    not logged.


History:

     1.0   This version of the program was an MS-DOS executable.

     2.0   In this version the program has been rebuilt into a Windows 95 32-
           bits executable. Because of that certain limitations of the original
           program could be removed. It's now also possible to scroll back
           through the list. The only disadvantage so far is that the 'comment'
           option no longer works. Perhaps I'll repair that in a later version.

     2.1   Bugfix: The time and date were displayed incorrectly in the previous
           version.

     3.0   Another redesign. Although still a Windows application, The 'look' of
           this version is quite different from the previous versions. The
           options 'winlog' and 'winchng' have been removed. A new option is
           'dir=' (see above). The format of the database files are changed too.
           They are not compatible with files of previous versions.

     3.1   - Bugfix: The program would always skip the last file in the
             directories.
           - Bugfix: NTFS partitions use a strange daylight saving time
             correction. Even in Explorer you can notice that the files
             timestamps shift 1 hour when you switch the system time from summer
             to winter or the other way arround. A bug or a feature? (See:
             http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q129/5/74.asp)
             As a result, Syslog would mark all files as changed when the
             daylight saving time changed. This version has a workaround for
             this problem.
           - The window now maximizes at startup of the program.
           - The print button has been removed. The print function was not
             implemented yet, and pressing the button caused an error.

           NOTE: The database files of this version are not compatible with
           those of version 3.0. Delete all *.DAT files in the syslog directory
           before running this new version.
           
     3.2   The new algorithm of version 3.1 was rather slow. It has been 
           optimized.
        



Hans Nelisse

hneel@xs4all.nl
http://www.xs4all.nl/~hneel/
