About WhatChanged

WhatChanged is a diagnostic tool that targets the broad area of Change Management. Change Management is a concept by which all system changes are tracked periodically, intelligently and reported on demand for the user to analyze, understand and if needed recover from change.

The advantage of change management is that it provides the user insurance against change that could be harmful. During the course of a day there are thousands of changes happening on your Windows system, using an effective change management solution you could view the changes with only the critical changes being highlighted, besides having the non-critical folders and registry hives filtered out. In short, change management is a process by which the user can monitor, analyze, understand and recover from change.

New ! Results Summary Console Change Policy Dashboard displays the summary of snapshot results.
Configuration Policy Dashboard displays the results of on demand policy comparison done through Compare Systems console and scheduled policy comparison done through Policy Comparison Scheduler.

New ! Result Analysis Console Displays the Policy Values and the Actual Values found in the computers that were compared against the configuration policy.

New ! Policy Comparison Results console Policies that are scheduled and run on demand are displayed on the left pane.
Details of the item selected in the left pane are displayed on the right pane.

New ! Search Audit Details Search Audit Success and Audit Failure events in the EventTracker Log Search browser.

New ! Track File Checksum Track file checksum to identify tampered items.

New ! Change Classification Rules With this functionality, administrators can classify files based on content and location so that the files can be more intelligently protected and managed based upon existing business taxonomy.

WhatChanged helps you to:

• Configure WhatChanged to log Snapshot results as WhatChanged events locally (Windows Application logs) or directly forward those events as Traps to EventTracker.

  Event ID	EventTracker Category	Cause	Resolution
  3233	WhatChanged: Files added	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any new file is added then this event is generated.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3234	WhatChanged: Files modified	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any file is modified then this event is generated.	Check if the changes made to file are intentional and then take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3235	WhatChanged: Files deleted	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any file is deleted then this event is generated.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3236	WhatChanged: Summary of file changes	After taking the system snapshot WhatChanged generates this event to summarize all the detected file changes.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3237	WhatChanged: Registry key added	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any new registry key is added then this event is generated.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3238	WhatChanged: Registry key modified	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any registry key is modified then this event is generated.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3239	WhatChanged: Registry key deleted	After taking the system snapshot if WhatChanged detects that any registry key is deleted then this event is generated.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3240	WhatChanged: Summary of registry changes	After taking the system snapshot WhatChanged generates this event to summarize all the detected registry changes.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3241		If WhatChanged detects any file changes (Addition, modification and deletion) after comparing a configuration policy with the system it generates this event for each file change detected.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.
  3242		If WhatChanged detects any registry changes (Addition, modification and deletion) after comparing a configuration policy with the system it generates this event for each registry change detected.	Take appropriate action for the detected change.

• Configure Configuration Policies (Configuration Policy Editor).

• Compare systems based on Configuration Policies. Compare systems can be used generate report if there is a discrepancies between the existing configuration and the actual configuration of systems.

• Export / Import Configuration Policies.

• Schedule Policy comparison.

• Identify and cure your systems of new viruses before your Anti-Virus provider comes up with a cure.

• Capture and store system Snapshots. Snapshots contain detailed information about the file system, registry, and system configuration.

• Track registry changes and restore “last known good configuration” registry settings.

• Schedule or take Snapshots on demand.

• Edit Snapshots.

• Reinitialize Snapshots. 

• Compare Snapshots. Unlike first generation products, only differences are stored to maximize speed and minimize disk space usage. 

• Configure Filters to filter out non-critical directories and registry hives. You can also turn off the filters anytime you please.

• Create, edit, and delete Logical Computer Groups.

• Create, edit, and delete Configuration Policies.

• Set and apply Global configuration settings.

• Set and apply System configuration settings.

WhatChanged provides an organization a strong handle in managing the Windows systems in their enterprise. The key benefits are:

• Minimize downtime, Increase Availability: System downtime causes significant losses in customer retention, brand reliability and most importantly “revenue.”

• Reduce fault diagnostic time.

• Reduces support response time: The support staff will be empowered with change information about the system. This reduces the dependency on human information that is most often misleading. WhatChanged change view will restrict the data shown to only changed folders/files/registry, reducing failure isolation time and problem resolution time.

• Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): TCO will reduce drastically when system downtime is reduced. Reducing system downtime means higher availability of help desk staff for other tasks, better utilization of technical staff who uses these systems besides enabling higher system availability.

• Improve control of critical systems / applications.

• Enhance security: WhatChanged can provide you with detailed change reports that can help identify breaches in security.

• Have insurance against change: With WhatChanged installed a user is confident about installing new software or making major configuration changes as he has information available that can help in reverting back to a good configuration in case of any problem.