title: Determine underlying calls triggered by Windows GUI action
body: <p>This is a follow-up question to one I asked on <a href="https://superuser.com/q/909629/224812">superuser.com</a>.
  How can I trace the consequences of GUI actions. Is there some kind of low level event log in windows?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Example</strong>
  If the user double-clicks on <code>&lt;name&gt;.pdf</code>, the consequences are: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>the extension is determined,</li>
  <li>the full path is determined</li>
  <li>the file is opened with the program associated with given extension</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>at least I assume that is what happens. That are the consequences I want to track in order to reproduce them in code.</p>