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wordwheelquery.md

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WordWheelQuery Registry Key

The WordWheelQuery registry key contains values that represent the history of searches performed using the Explorer search bar.

Analysis Value

  • User Activity

Operating System Availability

  • Windows 11
  • Windows 10
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 7

Artifact Location(s)

🔋 Live System:

  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery

🔌 Offline system:

  • File: %UserProfile%\NTUSER.DAT
  • Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery

Artifact Parsers

  • RegistryExplorer (Eric Zimmerman)

Artifact Interpretation

Within this registry key will be values with numerical names and an additional value MRUListEx. Each numerically named value represents one search term, and the MRUListEx value indicates the order in which the terms were searched.

The Last Write Timestamp of the WordWheelQuery registry key indicates the time at which the most recent search term was used to perform a search within Explorer.

Example

Within the WordWheelQuery registry key, the data of the value MRUListEx is as follows:

00000000  3f 00 00 00  |?...|
00000004  3e 00 00 00  |>...|
00000008  3d 00 00 00  |=...|
0000000c  3c 00 00 00  |<...|
00000010  3b 00 00 00  |;...|
00000014  3a 00 00 00  |:...|
00000018  39 00 00 00  |9...|
0000001c  38 00 00 00  |8...|
00000020  37 00 00 00  |7...|
00000024  31 00 00 00  |1...|
00000028  36 00 00 00  |6...|
0000002c  35 00 00 00  |5...|
00000030  2f 00 00 00  |/...|
00000034  34 00 00 00  |4...|
00000038  33 00 00 00  |3...|
0000003c  32 00 00 00  |2...|
00000040  30 00 00 00  |0...|
00000044  2e 00 00 00  |....|
00000048  2d 00 00 00  |-...|
0000004c  2c 00 00 00  |,...|
00000050  2b 00 00 00  |+...|
00000054  2a 00 00 00  |*...|
00000058  29 00 00 00  |)...|
0000005c  28 00 00 00  |(...|
00000060  27 00 00 00  |'...|
00000064  26 00 00 00  |&...|
00000068  25 00 00 00  |%...|
0000006c  24 00 00 00  |$...|
00000070  23 00 00 00  |#...|
00000074  22 00 00 00  |"...|
00000078  21 00 00 00  |!...|
0000007c  20 00 00 00  | ...|
00000080  1f 00 00 00  |....|
00000084  1e 00 00 00  |....|
00000088  1d 00 00 00  |....|
0000008c  1c 00 00 00  |....|
00000090  1b 00 00 00  |....|
00000094  1a 00 00 00  |....|
00000098  19 00 00 00  |....|
0000009c  18 00 00 00  |....|
000000a0  17 00 00 00  |....|
000000a4  16 00 00 00  |....|
000000a8  15 00 00 00  |....|
000000ac  13 00 00 00  |....|
000000b0  14 00 00 00  |....|
000000b4  12 00 00 00  |....|
000000b8  11 00 00 00  |....|
000000bc  10 00 00 00  |....|
000000c0  0f 00 00 00  |....|
000000c4  0e 00 00 00  |....|
000000c8  0d 00 00 00  |....|
000000cc  0c 00 00 00  |....|
000000d0  0b 00 00 00  |....|
000000d4  05 00 00 00  |....|
000000d8  0a 00 00 00  |....|
000000dc  09 00 00 00  |....|
000000e0  00 00 00 00  |....|
000000e4  08 00 00 00  |....|
000000e8  07 00 00 00  |....|
000000ec  06 00 00 00  |....|
000000f0  03 00 00 00  |....|
000000f4  04 00 00 00  |....|
000000f8  02 00 00 00  |....|
000000fc  01 00 00 00  |....|
00000100  ff ff ff ff  |ÿÿÿÿ|

From this information, we can determine that the most recently searched term exists in the value named 3f 00 00 00, or 63 in decimal. The data of this value is 74 00 65 00 73 00 74 00 00 00, which when translated from UTF-16LE is test. Because this is the most recent term as indicated by the MRUListEx value, the Last Write Timestamp will correspond to the time that this term was searched.

The earliest known search term is in the value named 01 00 00 00, or 1.