Secret Explorer description
Allows you to explore Windows Protected Storage

This system inspection/maintenance tool allows you to explore Windows Protected Storage. This Windows feature is not documented and is known only to professionals. With Secret Explorer you will be able to become a professional, too.

You will be able to locate hidden information in any Windows-based system. This includes web form autocomplete data from IE; Microsoft Outlook account and identity passwords, passwords for password protected websites; dial-up passwords and other data that MS decided to store there.

With the unique import/export feature of Secret Explorer you can move all your personalized data (such as IE web form autocomplete data and stored passwords) from one computer to another, basically familiarizing the new system with you.

Since Secret Explorer looks like Windows Explorer, its interface should look familiar to you. Protected Storage has a tree structure; each user has his own Protected Storage. Under Windows 9x, Secret Explorer also shows the content of the current PWL file (PWL files used to be the way to store private data).

You can explore Protected Storage as follows:
· Select the "File | Protected Storage Wizard" menu command. Click 'Read Protected Storage'.
· Contents of your Protected Storage will appear on the screen within the Explorer-like interface. Use the tree view control on the left pane to navigate through Protected Storage. The right pane displays contents of the item currently selected on the left pane.
· Note that the 'Read Protected Storage' command takes a static snapshot of Protected Storage. Thus, all changes that occur in Protected Storage after the snapshot is taken will not be reflected onscreen. Use the Edit | Refresh menu command to update the snapshot.
· You can save the snapshot into a file (the File | Save menu command) and load saved snapshots (File | Open)
· You can generate an overall report using the Edit | Generate Report menu command
· The print and print preview commands are available. Note that the Print command prints only the content of the right pane. In order to print out the entire Protected Storage, use the Edit | Generate Report command first.
· You can search throughout the entire Protected Storage using the Edit | Find and Edit | Find Next commands

You can transfer your personal settings (such as IE web form autocomplete data and stored passwords) from one computer to another in the following way:
· On the source computer, select the File | Protected Storage Wizard menu command. Press 'Read Protected Storage'
· Save the resulting protected storage snapshot in a file (use the File | Save menu command)
· Copy the resulting file onto the destination computer
· Run Secret Explorer on the destination computer (license is not required, you can run the DEMO version there)
· Open the file using the File | Open menu command
· Use the Tools | Import menu command to import the data.<

Here are some key features of "Secret Explorer":

· Show details.
By default, this mode is set to 'off'. In this mode, WSE will only display brief data. For example, IE indices and hex dump for records of known format will not be displayed, since this does not provide any valuable information. When the 'Show Details' mode is 'on', complete information is displayed.

· Bookmarks.
You can bookmark most interesting records. Your bookmarks may be saved in a file on disk. All bookmark commands are grouped under the Bookmarks menu. Shortcuts are available for most frequently used commands. You can toggle bookmarks, navigate through bookmarks, step back or forward, remove all bookmarks and bookmark all records with a non-empty comment. First 10 bookmarks can be accessed directly through the Bookmarks menu.

· Comments
You can annotate any record using the Edit | Annotate command. Your comments can be saved in a file. The 'Search Comments' option is available in the search mode. You can also bookmark all annotated records for easy navigation.

· Weblink
If the current record is linked to a web address, you can open the associated URL in your browser by selecting Tools | open item's URL (or simply pressing Ctrl + W or clicking the corresponding toolbar button).

· Tools|Erase IE autocomplete data
This command in the Tools menu erases all saved web form input and passwords contained in Protected Storage. The same thing can be done using the Internet Explorer functionality, but it often takes too much time (sometimes up to half an hour -- this is probably due to a bug in IE). In WSE this command works very quickly.

· Tools|Report
Generate a report. Secret Explorer can generate Regular reports - with every piece of data included, Smart reports - with useless data excluded and Special (forensic) reports. This option is available in the Pro version only. Along with a plain-text report, an XML report could also be generated (the Pro version only).

· Tools|Password
You can assign a password for laucnhing WSE on your computer. Secret Explorer will prompt for password when launched. This feature allows you to limit its usage. However, this protection is imperfect and may be cracked.

· Tools|Macro
Secret Explorer starting from version 5.0 supports VBScript macros. Using these macros you can control and automate Secret Explorer. Secret Explorer macros are stored in .sevbs files in the Secret Explorer directory. You can manage macros using the Toos|Macro menu command. You can run, edit, delete, rename or create macros. Also you can assign hot keys to macros. One of the predefined hotkeys Alt+1...Alt+9 can be assigned. The object model for programming is described here.

· Tools|Options
This is where you set up Secret Explorer. You can:
* set the mode for determining naming conventions for new documents. The Smart Document Naming feature can automatically assign appropriate names which make sense to new documents
* toggle Read-Only Mode. If you want to edit your Windows Protected Storage, this mode has to be turned off.
* toggle Verbose IE Data Display. When this option is off, all IE data is shown "as is". This may be inconvenient. When you turn Verbose Display on, WSE arranges displayed records in three groups: usernames and passwords, autocomplete strings, and indices (the latter often being of little interest).
* set Startup Action that determines what WSE should do when launched.
* toggle Unicode String Display. This option will be appreciated by international customers. It will not be needed for English-speaking users, since ASCII codes for English characters coincide with Unicode values. A unicode char is 2 bytes long, and a string may start with odd or even address. That's why when Unicode String Display is on, the hex dump will be shown as 3 strings: plain ASCII string, Unicode string starting from an even address and the same Unicode string starting from an odd address.


Requirements:

· MFC42 runtime DLLs (mfc42.DLL & msvcrt.DLL). Check your Windows/System directory, you may already have these DLLs. The installer will check your system and prompt for download if these DLLs are missing.
· Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher


Limitations:

· We made available the demo version of Secret Explorer for free download to let you evaluate its features and interface. The functionality of the demo version is limited. All registered users receive free email support and one-year free updates.