Shoutbox

Well maybe Whatchanged isn't working correctly (personally, I never trusted such apps anyways and always found that they always miss many things).

Plus, I see in that file list that you have something like Microsoft Antimalware installed and running. I don't know exactly how it is related or if it is an influence, but it might be that this has blocked the actual installation of the Smartbar(?). Either way, it clearly tells me that your test install wasn't a clean uninfluenced install, otherwise those specific file changes wouldn't be there to begin with.

I also don't see any temporary files created by the installer in that file list (and there should be plenty). This is one of those things that such tools like Whatchanged never seem to be able to catch. Another thing they often tend to miss are changed files (especially byte by byte changes without changing the filesize). And thus why I almost never use them; you miss quite a lot.

Anyways, on my test install, using real-time monitoring software (not snapshots), I can clearly see several processes and services being started up by the installer (besides the normal expected Plus!-installation stuff that is). Processes which in turn install the Smartbar, change Windows settings, etc. And the Smartbar is definitely installed afterwards (+-20MB on files and data for the Smartbar alone). I don't have Chrome installed though, so it is not my default browser, maybe that is the reason(?).

Either way, stating that the ad-ware components never get installed in XP, is therefor not quite correct.


EDIT: Another big downside of some tools like Whatchanged is that they sometimes can only track 1 process at a time, or only processes started in a very specific way. But the Smartbar installation (and other crap) is done by secondary processes. I don't know if Whatchanged is indeed such a limited tool (although I doubt it, but it is possible), but this might explain why there is no single trace of those additional things in your logs.