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Is there a website dedicated to windows installation tips/information for programmers, like registry keys modified by different products (Office, SQL server, etc) at installation time? How to uninstall programmatically different packages, etc etc

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AppDeploy.com is a website dedicated to collecting tips and information on deploying (and removing) apps.

It's aimed more at a sysadmin audience, who'll be using automated deployments using silent install techniques, but equally holds an awful lot of info on how various installers and app installs work.

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There isn't one website for all of these. The tool to use is Google, or searching for support articles on the manufacturer's site.

Also not all installers are disciplined enough to use a logical scheme of registry keys and installation directories.

In short, as far as installations go, this is the wild wild west.
Thank heavens for Revo Uninstaller.

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Thanks. Good answer. – Nestor Oct 20 '09 at 11:44
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As harrymc mentioned, there isn't a site that documents all registry keys modified by products very well. To find out exactly what an installer's doing, I typically use Process Monitor from Sysinternals and filter by the application name (eg. setup.exe). You can also save the capture and look through it later. Various filtering options make it easier to pinpoint registry modifications as well.

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Very often, setup.exe is just a loader that unpacks and starts another binary (often from your %TEMP%). So I usually have a list of what to exclude. – grawity Oct 20 '09 at 12:56
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