DLL Tracker?

[TheSam 0]

Hi everyone!

 

Does anyone of you know of a program with which I could see what files a certain program is using while it's running?

I want to clean up the computer from unused DLLs

 

Thanks,

Sam

[Christianb 8]

Hi Alec and TheSam,

At the same website you can find FileMon which sounds more like what you're looking for.

Happy Monitoring,

Christian Blackburn

[Xiven 0]

Here's a great little program with a nice GUI that lets you see what resources (eg. dlls) are being used by a program, or lets you see what programs are using a particular dll: http://support.crystaldecisions.com/communityCS/FilesAndUpdates/modules.zip

[CUViper 0]

Dependancy Walker will analyze any executable and tell you what dll's the program needs. The program in question does not need to be running - this just looks at the app itself to determine the dependencies (hence the name).

[Christianb 8]

Hi Alec,

Actually the reason I posted FileMon was because I read his post's message forgetting what the title of his post was was .

 

Hey CuViper,

That application looks great do you happen know how it stacks up to Depends a tool included with Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition? Depenecy walker looks almost identical to Microsoft's retail solution. However, there's a pretty good chance that it was improved upon and so I was curious to find out if you knew of any such features that Dep Walker has that Depends (sounds like that diaper for adults doesn't it ) doesn't.

 

Thanks,

Christian Blackburn

[Christianb 8]

Hi Alec,

Wow Alec PESX doesn't sound pesky at all . That sounds excellent. They used to have that functionality built into Windows 98. I still can't figure out why the dropped it. It was cool, I can't remember the extension though (I can find out if you really want to know), but it would record how many times a program was executed and which system files it called.

-Christian

[Xiven 0]

Quote:

P.S.=> Xiven, is this freeware too? apk

Well it comes as part of Seagate Crystal Reports which is far from free, but the program itself is freely available to download from their website with no mention of any license restrictions.

[CUViper 0]

Quote:

do you happen know how it stacks up to Depends a tool included with Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition? Depenecy walker looks almost identical to Microsoft's retail solution.

As far as I know, they are one and the same. I had actually pulled that link at one time from the MSDN site. Of course, the one on the website is the newest version, so there are bound to be a few improvements...

[TheSam 0]

Thank you all for the help and URLs, I'll check them out. At least one of them should be what I'm looking for

[Christianb 8]

Quote:

As far as I know, they are one and the same. I had actually pulled that link at one time from the MSDN site. Of course, the one on the website is the newest version, so there are bound to be a few improvements...

Hi CUViper,
It appears that you are exactly right. I was just tripping out, because the program names seemed to be different "Depends" vs "Dependency Walker". However on the MSDN site you linked to I see exactly what you are talking about

Quote:

Determining Which DLLs to Redistribute

You can see which DLLs are dependencies of an application by opening the application using the Dependency Walker (Depends.exe). Visual C++ 6.0 shipped with version 1 of this utility, but at the top of this article, you will find links (Alpha and x86) to the latest version of the Dependency Walker.

By using Depends.exe or the DUMPBIN utility with the /DEPENDENTS option, you can see a list of DLLs that statically link to your application and a list of the application's delay-loaded DLLs.

To see which DLLs, such as Microsoft ActiveX® controls, are dynamically loaded, use the profiling feature of Depends.exe. Then, use the application until you are sure that all paths were exercised. When you end the profiling session, Depends.exe will show you which DLLs were dynamically loaded.

As you use DUMPBIN or Depends.exe to view your dependencies, use the file list in Redist.txt to see which Microsoft-supplied DLLs are redistributable.

When using Depends.exe, be aware that a DLL may have a dependency on another DLL or on a version of a specific DLL. You can use Depends.exe on either the development computer or on a target computer. On the development computer, Depends.exe will report the DLLs that are required to support an application. If you have trouble getting an application to run on a target computer, you can copy Depends.exe (and its required DLL) to the target computer and open the application in Depends.exe. Depends.exe will report which of the application's DLLs are either missing or present with an incorrect version.

When you copy a DLL to another machine, copy the DLL such that it replaces the existing DLL. For example, on a Microsoft Windows NT® machine, the system DLLs are located in the system32 directory.

Thanks a lot for letting me know about the updated version. I will download and try it out.
-Christian Blackburn