Program for listing SW installed?

[terrypin]

One thing I find myself doing quite often is preparing a list of what software I have installed on my PPC and where it is - main memory, iPAQ File Store, SD card, or CF card. Neither AS on the PC nor Add/Remove on the PPC show this. (The latter doesn't even sort the list!)

Anyone know of a utility that can prepare such lists please, ideally freeware?

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

[terrypin]

One thing I find myself doing quite often is preparing a list of what software I have installed on my PPC and where it is - main memory, iPAQ File Store, SD card, or CF card. Neither AS on the PC nor Add/Remove on the PPC show this. (The latter doesn't even sort the list!)

Anyone know of a utility that can prepare such lists please, ideally freeware?

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

[bigkingfun]

I don't know of a program that does this automatically, but I use ListPro for keeping track of this information manually. It's especially handy when I have to reload, as I can just go through the list and check them off as they're installed. I keep the registration numbers and any important notes in the list as well.

[terrypin]

Thanks - but you sound better disciplined than me! I use a spreadsheet to list installed program details, but I'm afraid it's rarely bang up to date. Hence my hope to find something automatic.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by terrypin

Thanks - but you sound better disciplined than me! I use a spreadsheet to list installed program details, but I'm afraid it's rarely bang up to date. Hence my hope to find something automatic.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

Unfortunately, I didn't really find out where in the registry the installed application names are stored (definitely not in the WinCE databases - I've checked). However, there's a simple, albeit manual way to build up a list of the application: using the infos in \Windows\*.unload. They (assuming the best case, when the author of the application/the installer didn't leave out anything from the file. This is not always the case, unfortunately) list all the files a given application keeps in the file system.

It's not very hard to write an app that processes all of these files and reads them until a non-\My Documents and non-\Windows entry, still containing a backslash (\), is found. It'll start in most cases with either \Program Files or some kind of backup store. This is where the main app is installed. In 99% of the cases, the first occurrence of this will be reliable enough (there're no two directories of the same program under \Program Files, for example).

An example of this file:

0
\Program Files
RPhoto.exe
0
\Windows\Start Menu
RPhoto.lnk

If you need/like Java, I code the Java code that actually implements the algorithm outlined above.