We’ve covered how to print list of programs installed in your Computer, by default, Microsoft Windows keeps a record of all programs run by the user in the system and stores that data in the registry under “UserAssist” key, which is encrypted and this not yet known to the majority of users. There is still no official documentation on UserAssist in Microsoft Knowledge Base.
It’s registry key reveals the programs run at what date and time by your children/employees. UserAssist is a freeware portable tool that displays a list of programs run by user in Windows 7, this program decrypts UserAssist key and displays the retrieved data.
Encrypted UserAssist registry can be found at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist
Using UserAssist
Download and run UserAssist tool. On first run, the tool displays the data for the current user by retrieving data from corressponding key. You can erase all data collected by Windows by clicking “Clear all” from Commands menu. If you don’t want Windows to log all this info in the future, you can do that by executing “Logging Disabled” command from the same Commands menu.
You can also erase this data by using the popular CCleaner tool, open CCleaner in Windows tab, then scroll down to ‘Advanced’ section and select “User Assist History’ and start cleaning.
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UserAssist 2.5 helps you to know the programs run by you from last Windows install date to till now, it works on Windows 7 only, you can download the older version for earlier versions of Windows from here.