Windows

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Windows is a widely-spread operating system from Microsoft.

There are 2 main branches of Windows:

• the DOS-branch: i.e. Windows 95, 98, ME
• the NT-branch: i.e. Windows NT 4, XP, Vista

Features

• Basic and Dynamic Disks, see: [1]

Introduced in Windows NT

• NTFS

Introduced in Windows XP

• Prefetch
• System Restore (Restore Points); also present in Windows ME

SP2

• Windows Firewall

Introduced in Windows Server 2003

• Volume Shadow Copies

Introduced in Windows Vista

• BitLocker
• Search integrated in operating system
• ReadyBoost
• SuperFetch
• Transactional NTFS (TxF)
• Transactional Registry (TxR)
• Shadow Volumes; the volume-based storage of the Volume Shadow Copy data
• $Recycle.Bin
• Windows XML Event Log (EVTX)
• User Account Control (UAC)

Introduced in Windows 7

• BitLocker To Go
• Jump Lists
• Sticky Notes

Introduced in Windows 8

• File History
• Storage Spaces
• Search Charm History
• Resilient File System (ReFS); Was initially available in the Windows 8 server edition.

Introduced in Windows Server 2012

• Resilient File System (ReFS)

Forensics

Partition layout

Default partition layout, first partition starts:

• at sector 63 in Windows 2000, XP, 2003
• at sector 2048 in Windows Vista, 2008, 7

Filesystems

• FAT, exFAT
• NTFS
• ReFS

Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin contains "Recycled" files. Moving files and directories to the Recycle Bin is also referred to as soft deletion, since the files are not removed from the file system.

RECYCLER

The Recycler format is used by Windows 2000, XP.

Per user Recycle Bin folder in the form:

C:\Recycler\%SID%\

Which contains:

• INFO2 file; "Recycled" files metadata

$RECYCLE.BIN

The $Recycle.Bin is used as of Windows Vista.

Per user Recycle Bin folder in the form:

C:\$Recycle.Bin\%SID%\

Which contains:

• $I files; "Recycled" file metadata
• $R files; the original data

Registry

The Windows Registry is a database of keys and values that provides a wealth of information to forensic investigators.

Thumbs.db Files

Thumbs.db files can be found on many Windows systems. They contain thumbnails of images or documents and can be of great value for the investigator.

See also: Vista thumbcache.

Browser History

The Web Browser History files can contain significant information. The default web browser that comes with Windows is Microsoft Internet Explorer but other common browsers on Windows are Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

Search

See Windows Desktop Search

Setup API Logs

Windows Vista introduced several new Setup API Log files.

Also see [2].

Scheduled Tasks

In Windows the Scheduled Tasks can be found in:

C:\Windows\Tasks

This directory contains .job files which are in the Windows Job File Format.

In later versions of Windows (at least Windows 7) XML-based equivalents can be found in the following locations:

C:\Windows\System32\Tasks
C:\Windows\SysWow64\Tasks

Sleep/Hibernation

After (at least) Windows 7 recovers from sleep/hibernation there often is a system time change event (event id 1) in the event logs.

Users

Windows stores a users Security identifiers (SIDs) under the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

The %SID%\ProfileImagePath value should also contain the username.

Windows Error Reporting (WER)

As of Vista, for User Access Control (UAC) elevated applications WER reports can be found in:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\

As of Vista, for non-UAC elevated applications (LUA) WER reports can be found in:

C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\

Corresponding registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting

Advanced Format (4KB Sector) Hard Drives

Windows XP does not natively handle drives that use the new standard of 4KB sectors. For information on this, see Advanced Format.

%SystemRoot%

The actual value of %SystemRoot% is store in the following registry value:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
Value: SystemRoot

See Also

• Prefetch
• Setup API Logs
• SuperFetch
• Windows Application Compatibility
• Windows Desktop Search
• Windows Event Log (EVT)
• Windows Job File Format
• Windows XML Event Log (EVTX)
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8

External Links

• Wikipedia: Microsoft Windows
• Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Vista setup log file locations
• The Forensic Analysis of the Microsoft Windows Vista Recycle Bin, by Mitchell Machor, 2008
• Microsoft Windows File System Tunneling, by Eric Huber, February 24, 2013
• Spotting the Adversary with Windows Event Log Monitoring, by National Security Agency/Central Security Service, February 28, 2013
• Search history on Windows 8 and 8.1, by Yogesh Khatri's, April 1, 2014
• Search history on windows 8.1 - Part 2, by Yogesh Khatri's, April 21, 2014

Recycle Bin

• Lesson 3 – The Recycle Bin, by Steve Hailey
• The Forensic Analysis of the Microsoft Windows Vista Recycle Bin, by Mitchell Machor, January 22, 2008

Malware/Rootkits

• Inside Windows Rootkits, by Chad Tilbury, September 4, 2013

Tracking removable media

• Tracking USB First insertion in Event logs, by Yogesh Khatri, August 18, 2012

Under the hood

• MSDN: Comparing Memory Allocation Methods, by Microsoft
• How Windows Starts Up (Part the second)
• DLL/COM Redirection
• Dynamic-Link Library Search Order
• Image File Execution Options
• Load Library Safely, by Swamy Shivaganga Nagaraju, 13 May 2014

Windows File Protection (WFP)

• Description of the Windows File Protection feature
• Description of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 System File Checker (Sfc.exe)

MSI

• Changes to Package Caching in Windows Installer 5.0, by Heath Stewart, February 2, 2009
• MSI: The Case Of The Invalid Signature, by Didier Stevens, July 26, 2013

Side-by-side (WinSxS)

• Wikipedia: Side-by-side assembly
• Assembly Searching Sequence
• RT_MANIFEST resource, and ISOLATION_AWARE_ENABLED
• Isolated Applications and Side-by-side Assemblies
• DotLocal (.local) Dll Redirection, by Junfeng Zhang, January 24, 2006
• Diagnosing SideBySide failures, by Junfeng Zhang, April 14, 2006
• EVERYTHING YOU NEVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WINSXS
• DLL Side-loading: A Thorn in the Side of the Anti-Virus Industry, by Amanda Stewart, April 2014

System Restore (Restore Points)

• Wikipedia: System Restore
• Restore Point Forensics, by Steve Bunting
• Restore Point Analysis, by Harlan Carvey, June 16, 2007
• Restore Point Forensics, by Harlan Carvey, October 20, 2006
• System Restore Point Log Decoding

Crash dumps

• Technet: Drwtsn32 on Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008/Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2, by Yong Rhee, December 29, 2010
• MSDN: How to read the small memory dump file that is created by Windows if a crash occurs, by Microsoft

Kerberos

• Protection from Kerberos Golden Ticket - Mitigating pass the ticket on Active Directory, CERT-EU, July 2014

Reliability Monitoring

• Stability Index and Reliability, by Paul Bobby, January 17, 2011
• Windows 7 Reliability Monitor Forensic Artifacts, by phx4n6, January 3, 2014

RPC

• RPC to Go v.1, by Michael Platts, October 24, 2008
• RPC to Go v.2, by Michael Platts, December 4, 2008

User Account Control (UAC)

• User Account Control – What Penetration Testers Should Know, by Raphael Mudge, March 20, 2014

Windows Event Logs

• Exploring the Program Inventory Event Log, by Corey Harrell, March 24, 2014

Windows Scripting Host

• Going To Ground with The Windows Scripting Host (WSH), by Devon Kerr, February 19, 2014

USB

• USBKEY Guide, by SANS Institute - Digital Forensics and Incident Response, September 2009
• USB Drive Enclosure Guide, by SANS Institute - Digital Forensics and Incident Response, September 2009

WMI

• Understanding WMI Malware, by Julius Dizon, Lennard Galang, and Marvin Cruz, July 2010

Windows Error Reporting (WER)

• Drwtsn32 on Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008/Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2, by Yong Rhee, December 29, 2010
• Exploring Windows Error Reporting, by Corey Harrell, February 24, 2014

Windows Firewall

• Wikipedia: Windows Firewall
• Windows Firewall Tools and Settings

Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64)

• Wikipedia: WoW64

Windows XP

• Description of Windows XP System Information (Msinfo32.exe) Tool

Windows Scheduler

• Windows Scheduler (at job) Forensics, by johnmccash, September 16, 2009