Windows

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Windows is a widely-spread operating system from Microsoft.

Features

• Basic and Dynamic Disks, see: [1]

Introduced in Windows NT

• NTFS

Introduced in Windows XP

• Prefetch

SP2

• Windows Firewall

Introduced in Windows 2003 (Server)

• Volume Shadow Copies

Introduced in Windows Vista

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

Introduced in Windows 7

• BitLocker To Go
• Jump Lists
• Sticky Notes

Introduced in Windows 8

• File History
• Storage Spaces
• 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

RECYCLER

Used by Windows 2000, XP. Uses INFO2 file.

See: [2]

$RECYCLE.BIN

Used by Windows Vista. Uses $I and $R files.

See: [3]

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 log files (setupapi.log)

Windows Vista introduced several setup log files [4].

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.

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

External Links

• Wikipedia: Microsoft Windows
• How Windows Starts Up (Part the second)
• 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

Application Compatibility Database

• Technet: Understanding Shims, by Microsoft
• MSDN: Application Compatibility Database, by Microsoft
• Secrets of the Application Compatilibity Database (SDB) – Part 1, by Alex Ionescu, May 20, 2007
• Secrets of the Application Compatilibity Database (SDB) – Part 2, by Alex Ionescu, May 21, 2007
• Leveraging the Application Compatibility Cache in Forensic Investigations, by Andrew Davis, May 4, 2012

Windows Firewall

• Wikipedia: Windows Firewall
• Windows Firewall Tools and Settings

Windows XP

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

Windows 8

• Features new to Windows 8, Wikipedia
• Windows 8 Forensics - part 1
• Windows 8 Forensics - part 2
• Windows 8 Forensics - part 3
• Windows 8 Forensic Guide, by Amanda C. F. Thomson, 2012
• Forensic Focus: Windows 8 Forensics - A First Look, Presentation, Slides, by Josh Brunty, August 2012