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MCMrARM edited this page Mar 22, 2019 · 1 revision

Requirements

  • A PC or virtual machine which has not been connected to the internet for at least 3 months and has Minecraft installed (note that Minecraft is pre-installed on Windows 10 Home and Pro).

Instruction

The goal is to obtain the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore directory.

The preferred way to obtain it is to use a live Linux distribution (eg. Ubuntu). This is because I am recovering data from the file similarly to how one recovers deleted data from disk. If you can avoid booting up the system, the file will not be open for writing and more data can be recovered. Both ways are safe and the file only contains information about installed and available updates for Windows and UWP apps.

If you find the live way too hard or don't have a free USB stick, proceed to obtaining it from a running system.

To obtain it using the live Linux way:

  • Download the Ubuntu image from the official website: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you?version=18.04.2&architecture=amd64
  • Burn it to a CD or use Rufus to format an USB pendrive and put the image on it.
  • Boot the PC from the CD/USB. When you get an option to select that, select Try Ubuntu, DO NOT install it.
  • Open the file explorer (the folder/safe icon on the left, named Files), select Other Locations, then select the "XXX GB Volume" entry, navigate to Windows\SoftwareDistribution, copy the DataStore folder to Documents, then create an archive (right click->Compress...).
  • Open Firefox and upload it to a site like transfer.sh, and send me the link.
  • This is all. You don't need to follow anything else here.

To obtain it from a running system you can do the following:

  • MAKE SURE BEFORE BOOTING THAT THE PC WILL NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. If it manages to connect, even for a few seconds, it's very likely the file will become completely useless.
  • Stop the Windows Update service (otherwise you won't be able to copy it)
  • Copy C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore to another place and ZIP it
  • (Optional) Restart the Windows Update service After the DataStore dir is copied, the PC can safely be connected to the internet and the ZIP uploaded. Another option is to use a pendrive to copy it to another PC and then upload.

If you do not want to share the DataStore.edb file you can still contribute by launching the Python script used for analyzing the file yourself. If you want to do that, please privately message me (mrarm on Freenode / @MCMrARM on Twitter / @[email protected]; please don't use E-Mail for this as it might take me a while repond).

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