I'm a volunteer guinea-pig for Win7 in our organisation, LNK files have been a great source of info in our current XP/SP3 environment but I'm struggling to get my head around how they're implemented in Win7. Notwithstanding various JumpList articles (e.g. Harlan and Mark) and other artefacts which may be available via the Previous Versions feature, I have noticed so far
1. Compared to the general XP list (not application-specific), Win7 seems keep its shortcuts in "C\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent"
2. The number of files maintained in the above folder appears - at least on my system - to be restricted to 149.
3. The shortcuts don't appear to have a .LNK extension any more?
Re 149 records, in the above folder and sorting on "Date Modified", in ascending order, the first file in the list is "Forensic Investigation Process.docx" and the second is "Mailbox and EV dates.xls"
If I open a file named "20101006.xls" - which is NOT in the current list of 149 - and then close it again, I observe the following
(a) Number of files in "C\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent" remains at 149
(b) "Forensic Investigation Process.docx" has disappeared off the list (still sorted by "Date Modified" in ascending order)
© "Mailbox and EV dates.xls" is now top of the list (i.e. oldest Modified Date)
(d) "20101006.xls" has appeared at the bottom of the list (i.e. newest Modified Date)
If I repeat the same operation - always using a filename which doesn't already exist in "C\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent" - I always get the same result i.e. number of files remains at 149 and the oldest one drops off the list to be replaced by the newest.
149 ain't a lot of files if - like me - you need to go back a few months to get a view of activity (esp. related to accessing files on external media and tying this up to USB device usage).
Re no .LNK extension, it appears that right-clicking on a shortcut in "C\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent", selecting "Properties" and then clicking on the General Tab does indeed show that the "Type of file" is a "Shortcut (.lnk) EXCEPT if the target was on external media in which case clicking on the General Tab results in a message like this
"The folder "E\Sample Documents" specified in the Start In box is not valid. Make sure that the folder exists and that the path is correct"
Comments anyone? Is 149 an absolute number or is it configurable anywhere? The registry key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RecentDocs" appears to have 149 numeric values plus "Default" and "MRUListEx"
I suspect I'm missing something blindingly obvious ………………
Cheers