Tool to see what files are being accessed by a process - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 05:35:39 am
content: I am looking for a piece of software that can do the following :for a given executable :- give me a list of all files and file paths that are being accessed during the run of the program.for examplefilemon notepad.exewould launch notepad and start monitoring that instance.if open a file in notepad it would show :read c:users\<blah>\<filename>if i save the file it woudl tell me : write c:\users\....I am trying to trace a very weird bug in Altium and i want to find out exactl what all files the damn thing is accessing. i suspect there is somewhere a hidden cache directory.Here is what happened :i have a pcb library that contains a footprint. mylib.pcblibi open this file in altiumi do save copy as into thelib.pcblibif modify the footprint and save mylib.pcblib.At this point mylib holds a newer version of the footprint than thelib.i now overwrite mylib.pcblib with thelib.pcblib ( which holds the unmodifed footprint ). i do this OUTSIDE of altiumthis library file is part of an integrated libary.i recompile the integrated library. : the new edit is in. even though that data no longer exists ( the file was overwritten)if i take the source files to a new machine and recompile all is well.if i recompile on the original machine it gives me the wrong footprint.if i open mylib.pcblib it shows me what i expect.even if i delete the output folders and cache files this problem still exists. so this means that somewhere on the disk altium has a cached copy of my last edited file. probably in the local history.but even if i wipe that one. The problem still persists !So i want to track the real paths and files that are being accessed during the run of the program ( especially during the 'compile integrated liibrary') operation.There has to be a program that can do that ....

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 05:42:29 am
content: I think Process Explorer can do some of the things you mentioned, but in a crude way. It does not give you an automated logging system for a process, but you can manually inspect a process to see what strings it has in memory. Sometimes use it to find which process is responsible for a locked file: CTRL+F and type in the file name as search parameters.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 05:46:16 am
content: i tried process explorer but that shows you only a temporary snapshot. if during compilation files are rapidly opened and closed ( or temporary fiels are created and deleted ) you won;t see that ...

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 07:54:59 am
content: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmonorhttps://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opened_files_view.html

author: HwAoRrDk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 10:39:58 pm
content: Another vote here for SysInternals Procmon. It can also log registry access.

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2019, 10:49:45 pm
content: Quote from: HwAoRrDk on February 20, 2019, 10:39:58 pmHere's another vote for the very good tools from SysInternals. It's been years, but back when I was a Win32 jockey their tools were always nearby.