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Notepad-Windowstate-Buffer

Important

This project is being deprecated and rolled into Notepad State Library. No updates will be made to this project. All new notes, documentation, and code will be at the new repository.

Reverse engineering and extracting digital artifacts from the Windowstate files for Notepad in Microsoft Windows 11. These files are located at: %localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsNotepad_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\WindowState

Please see my other repository for the Tabstate files.

Thanks

jlogsdon for lots of help
NordGaren for his 010 Editor Binary Template file on the Notepad Tabstate file. It was very handy learning the syntax and the struct/functions for uLEB128.
JustArion for his ImHex Pattern file on the Notepad Tabstate file. It was very handly learning the syntax.

Overall Behavior

Adding a tab adds another chunk to the collection of chunks and updates the number of bytes to the CRC32. Any existing slack space in the file will get overwritten up to the end of the new CRC32.

Closing a tab deletes the relevant chunk from the collection and updates the number of bytes to the CRC32. Slack space after the CRC32 may result from closing tabs. The files appears to never get smaller?

The following actions will cause an update of the sequence number and of the file:

  • Resizing Window
  • Moving Window
  • Reordering Tabs
  • Closing Tab(s)
    • Closing multiple Tabs at once results in one action
  • Opening Tab(s)

File Format

  • First 2 bytes "NP"
  • Sequence number (uLEB128)
  • Number of bytes to the CRC32 (uLEB128)
  • Delimiter? (0x00)
  • Number of Tabs (uLEB128)
  • Collection of chunks (1 for every tab)
    • New chunks added with new tabs
    • Chunks are ordered the same was as in Notepad. Changing the order will change the order of the chunks accordingly.
    • GUID of the associated Tabstate file
  • Active Tab (uLEB128)
  • Six uINT32 Numbers
    • Numbers 1 and 2 are the X,Y Coordinates in uINT32 of the top left corner of the window.
    • Numbers 3 and 4 are the X,Y Coordinates in uINT32 of the bottom right corner of the window.
    • Numbers 5 and 6 are the X,Y Coordinates in uINT32 of the relation to the bottom right corner from the top left. Essentially giving the window width and height.
  • Delimiter? (0x00)
  • CRC 32 of all the previous bytes starting from the sequence number
  • Slackspace as tabs are removed/closed
    • Prior CRC32, Coords, partial Active Tab, and partial GUID can be recovered potentially
    • This data will get super munged over time

Attempted Parsing of Slack Space

Warning

The below approaches make heavy assumptions. As Tabs are opened and closed, the slack space will get more and more convoluted and disarrayed. Manual parsing is suggested and there is no guarantee of being able to recover anything of use.

Approach 1

Approach 1 starts at the end of the slack space and goes backwards looking for 5 byte sequences which could be the 0x00 delimeter and CRC32. An assumption is made that the first byte of the CRC32 cannot also be 0x00. From there, it continues to read backwards attempting to pull out information. One difficulty is that the size of the Active Tab is variable and two assumptions are made for a 1 byte and 2 byte size.

Approach 2

Approach 2 is making the assumption that a user will only ever open/close 1 Tab at a time. It looks at the size of the slack space and reads from the start of the slack space. This method has no chance of recovering a full GUID.