monitor file/directory access in C#

Question

I want to develop the application which logs the files / directories accessed on the machine.

e.g. I go to D:\ and into a folder documents and open a word file. I want my application to create a log in the following format:

1. D:\ Opened
2. D:\documents Opened
3. D:\documents\secret.docx Opened

I've used FileSystemWatcher to achieve the other type of file system activity but unable to get events for accessing this.

Answer 1

sounds like you wanna do a FileMon program like sys internals. in their website Mark tells about the way FileMon works so you can get some inspiration by reading the article.

also see here: How do you monitor file access and changes on a file server by user name?

Answer 2

Not sure this sort of monitoring can be achieved with filesystemwatcher as it is aimed at monitoring changes I believe. You could use filesystem Auditing (by going into advanced security settings) which will log events in eventlog and you can pull it from there.