View files a program is accessing in Windows

N

netsider

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 12, 2004
Messages
466
I wasn't sure where to put this thread, but I figured Operating Systems was appropriate since it's mainly a Windows question (although I wouldn't mind the same answer for Linux also). With tools like Process Hacker and Process Viewer (and the list goes on), you can see the dependencies and modules that a program/process is using, and their locations.. but is there anyway to see what files a program is currently reading/writing to, or working with? Take Sky Drive for example (or Google Drive, if you want): is there anyway to see what files Skydrive or Google drive is currently uploading on your own system? (Without using either Skydrive or Google Drive to find out, obviously - since Google drive tells you).

Just wondering, since I currently don't know of anyway to.

Thank you. Any help would be appreciated.. as always ;)
 
The sysinternals tools are the best, but also remember in a pinch the perfmon app in Windows 7 & 8 will show this info too...

Run: perfmon /res

to run perfmon in Resourse Monitor mode. Then look at the Disk tab to see current activity on files in the system. Check the boxes in the process list to filter by individual processes.... I'm always surprised that people don't know about Resource Monitor.
 
Sorry for replying so late... I had forgotten about this post. I meant more like which files a task is actually working with, not it's dependencies. I know things like Process Explorer (or DLL Wizard, etc) can tell you all the dependencies and .dll files a program is working with, but is there anything that will show you actual files being used by a user inside of a program? (Ex: You save a file in notepad.exe, and it shows that notepad.exe just wrote to a text file)

Is there anything like this? I'm pretty sure process explorer can't do it, as I've tried.
 
As pointed out above, Process Monitor will do this. It's exactly what it's designed to do.

You will start by seeing all processes and files, so you'll need to apply a filter just down to the process you need. Then you might want to turn off registry or network monitoring to just see the files.
 
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