How to find where an application is storing data?

I have been using this program for a long time

I installed it on a new system and I need to find where it saves information so I can restore my stickies from a backup.

Is there any way to find out where an application writes data? I'm thinking some kind of low-level listener or file sniffer or something?

2 Answers

Procmon from Sysinternals (Microsoft) shows you the files (and registry keys) that running applications have open.

You can find it here.

All modern OS have a default location where programs are supposed to store data that is created on behalf of a user.

On Windows, it's under %APPDATA% for files internal to the application (i.e. files the user should not access directly, such as internal preferences), and %USERPROFILE% for the user's data.

The actual location of these folders depends on OS version and system config, but usually it's:

%APPDATA% : C:\Documents and Settings{username}\Application Data %USERPROFILE% : C:\Documents and Settings{username}

Look into theses folders, probably the program stores its stuff in some subfolder there.