Software Counter

Hi,

You need to be running NT or better, but you could turn auditing on (audit the read event) for the application's exe that you're interested in and then you get information on when it was read (started) including the date and time.

Auditingis part of the local security settings, and if search for audit in the Windows help, you'll see how its done.

Cheers,
Tim.

Hi again,

I had a bit of a look on my favorite utilities site, www.tucows.com but couldn't find anything.

The problem you'll have with Windows98 is that its not secure and any data you collect on that machine cant be guaranteed free from tampering.

Anyway, I thought you could do the following... Its not perfect but its a solution...

1. Write a simple bat file to append a line to a log and then start the application. It might look something like this...

echo off
time /t >> c:\SomewhereHidden\SomethingObscure.ext
date /t >> c:\SomewhereHidden\SomethingObscure.ext
echo Running Application "ApplicationName" >> c:\SomewhereHidden\SomethingObscure.ext
c:\ApplicationLocation\Application.exe

Where SomethingObscure.ext will contain entries for each initialization of the application.

2. Compile the bat file to an EXE file using the utility BAT2EXE found at

http://home.wanadoo.nl/source/

(remove spaces from the above URL)

Name that executable something plausible- for example if you were doing this to start notepad.exe you might call it notpad_start.exe

3. Place that exe into the application's directory alongside the "real one".

Remove all icons and methods of starting via its normal icon and replace them with icons pointing to the bat file you just created.

Change the icon image for each too. Browse to the applications exe and you'll be able to select the original image.

Then at the end of the month or whenever, you simply dump the log file produced into Excel and off you go...

Cheers,
Tim.

Hi,

Which part is slow and cumbersome? The initial setup? Or the reporting?

If its the reporting, then I suggest using Perl to do the reports rather than something like Excel. I dont know whether you've used Perl before, but it is relatively simple and would only take a short time to setup your detailed reports.

Once the Perl scripts were written, it'd be a simple double click to produce your information, which could automatically be mailed back to you... In fact, you could set up a scheduled task to do it all...

...and no, I'm not aware of any 3rd party applications that already do this.

Cheers,
Tim.