Difference between revisions of "Jump Lists"

Revision as of 09:51, 23 August 2011

Jump Lists are a feature found in Windows 7.

Jump Lists

Jump Lists are a new Windows 7 Taskbar feature that gives the user quick access to recently accessed application files and actions. Jump Lists come in two flavors, automatic (autodest, or *.automaticDestinations-ms) and custom (custdest, or *.customDestinations-ms) files. Autodest files are created by the operating system

Jump Lists are located in the user profile path, in the C:\Users\user\Recent folder. Autodest Jump Lists are located in the automaticDestinations subdirectory, and custdest files are located in the customDestinations subdirectory.

AutomaticDestinations

Path: C:\Users\user\Recent\AutomaticDestinations
Files: *.automaticDestinations-ms

Structure
The autodest files follow the MS-CFB compound file binary format specification. Each of the numbered streams within the file follows the MS-SHLLINK binary format specification.

Tools
Autodest files can be opened in tools such as the MiTec Structured Storage Viewer, and each of the streams individually/manually extracted. Each of the extracted numbered streams can then be viewed via the Windows File Analyzer.
Another approach would be to use Mark Woan's JumpLister tool to view the information within the numbered streams of each autodest file.
The autodest files also contain a stream named "DestList" which acts as a most recently/frequently used (MRU/MFU) list. This stream consists of a 32-byte header, followed by the various structures that correspond to each of the individual numbered streams. Each of these structures is 114 bytes in size, followed by a variable length Unicode string. The first 114 bytes of the structure contains the following information at the corresponding offsets:

CustomDestinations

Path: C:\Users\user\Recent\CustomDestinations
Files: *.customDestinations-ms

Structure
Custdest files reportedly follow a structure of sequential MS-SHLLINK binary format segments.

AppIDs

List of Jump List IDs