Windows Developer Power Tools

15.1 Monitoring File Access in Your System with Filemon

File access on any system normally goes smoothly, but it’s hard to track down exactly where problems lie on the rare occasions when you run into difficulties. Installations can fail because of incorrect access permissions, directories can fill up with temporary files created by unknown applications, and exceptions can get thrown with vague, unhelpful errors. Few tools exist to help you sort out which program is hitting which file at what point in time, so problems like these often lead to painful debugging sessions. Thankfully, the folks at Sysinternals created Filemon to help out in such circumstances. (You’ll notice four separate tools from Sysinternals in this chapter—these folks are good!)

Tip

Big changes occurred at Sysinternals right as this book was heading to print: Microsoft has acquired Sysinternals and its brilliant staff. The future of the tools appears to be bright, however. Mark Russinovich, owner of Sysinternals, has blogged that Microsoft will continue to make these tools available for free. See Mark’s blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/default.aspx for future updates.

Filemon at a Glance
Tool	Filemon
Version covered	7.02
Home page	http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html
Power Tools page	http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/70
Summary	Helps you sort out file-access issues
License type	Freeware; can’t ...