Recovering Stored URLs on HDD as External Device

Any ideas on how I can retrieve stored/typed URLs from a HDD that's hooked up to another PC via a USB HDD converter? Is it possible to tap into the registry of that HDD if it's in that particular state? If so, I'll be able to see them there. Thanks for any info.

 

depends what you mean by stored? Your favorites are stored in you uuser profile. not too sure about your browsing history.

This may be better placed in the software forum

 

Thanks for the response. I meant URLs that are remembered when typed into the address bar. The browser on that HDD is IE8.

 

I was playing with this and found something that might work. Not real simple, though.
I don't have many URLs stored in IE so it is difficult for me to test as to how complete the list is.

This is the basic idea here but you will be loading ntuser.dat instead of those hives.

So:

Set your Hidden and System files to visible.
Open regedit
Highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
On the File menu select Load Hive
Browse to your old HD and the the Users (Vista/Win7) or "Documents and Settings"(XP) folder and then your old username folder and select the ntuser.dat file and choose to Open it. You could instead copy that file to your current desktop so you are working with a copy rather than the original and then browse to the copy.
Type in a name for the new hive such as oldHD
Now Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and you should find your new oldHD hive. Expand that and go to Software then Microsoft then Internet Explorer then you should find TypedURLs. Highlighting that should give you the list of URLs in the right pane of regedit. You can also right-click TypedURLs folder and Export it to a .txt file by selecting that .txt filetype rather than .reg in the drop down box of the Save window. Then just open the .txt file to see the list of URLs.

If you have any problems let me know, I may have forgotten something in those steps, it gets a bit confusing navigating in regedit.

 

It really was! I'm just sore because I didn't think of it. :-D It worked to perfection. You're a beast! Thank you!