What Changed On The Harddisks? Need help for assigment for University

[it01y2 0]

Hi my lecturer set a piece of work, I'm not sure why? With the question: "What changed on the hard disk/s?"This reffering to the steps below:1. Power up Machine (Windows XP Home)2. Login3. Shut downSo what has exactly has changed on the hard disk/s after this procedure?I'm just wondering what content has been modified or changed in any way. (I'm not sure how this is any relevant to the course I'm doing ) Any ideas, or any ideas of any commands i could use in linux or windows xp home to show modified files in the last 10 minutes or so?Thanks, Rob

Edited January 29, 2009 by it01y2 (see edit history)

[Xalor 0]

I don't think anything happens, to the files on the hard drive. The only thing I can think of is the RAM, but I don't really know much about hardware. There is a command, I know that much, it might be on the Task Manager, but I know I saw my uncle do something like that on my computer, when he was checking why the date automatically was reset every start-up. Ask one of your classmates, and it might be a trick question. The boot files may change every start-up to do system tasks, and any command doesn't tell what is modified, that happened before the shutdown.

[Baniboy 3]

I didn't exactly underestand what you ment but I have an idea.All the modified/opened files are marked down in the opened/modified files log, shouldn't be that hard to find. I believe it's a .dat or .txt file. Someone here should add a little more light on where to find it.

[buxgoddess 1]

The system login and activities are logged, alerts are logged, registry is updated, many system files have last access status updated. Also system is checked for errors and problems.Apart from this the pagefile gets changed.There is some configuration files which gets updated and all remains the same.

[ragav.bpl 0]

The system login and activities are logged, alerts are logged, registry is updated, many system files have last access status updated. Also system is checked for errors and problems.Apart from this the pagefile gets changed.
There is some configuration files which gets updated and all remains the same.

Yup dude this is what exactly happens and also if you have some software such as system mechanic then every time you login a disk check is performed and system analysis is also done by the computer.