Windows – How to “persuade” programs open an actual .lnk file in Windows 7

shortcutswindowswindows 7

A .lnk file in Windows is an actual file intended to be a shortcut to another file. However, I really do want to view the contents on the .lnk file itself. I'm finding it literally impossible to do so; no matter what I try, my applications are opening the contents of the file it points to (drag/drop into text or hex editor, file | open from text or hex editor, etc.)

Is there some way I can tell a program to actually open the .lnk file instead of the file it points to?

Best Answer

Opening shortcuts

In order to edit a shortcut you obviously need to open it first, and that proves to be tricky. In some cases you can force programs into loading shortcut files by using a command-line argument:

"X:\Path\to\program.exe" "X:\my shortcut.lnk"

Whether the link target or the actual shortcut file is loaded depends on the program, though. Here's a list (in no particular order) of some free hex editors which supports them out of the box:

Workaround

In case you're unable to load the content of a shortcut file, you can open a command prompt and rename the .lnk file to a different, non-existent extension such as .lne:

cd /d "X:\Folder\containing\shortcuts"
ren "my shortcut.lnk" "my shortcut.lne"

If you have multiple files you can also rename all of them at once:

ren *.lnk *.lne

You will be then able to treat those shortcuts just like regular files. When you're done, make sure to rename them back to restore their usual functionality.

Additional information

A shortcut, or shell link, contains metadata information used to access a specific link target. It's parsed and interpreted by the Windows shell. From the official documentation:

The shell link structure stores various information that is useful to end users, including:

  • A keyboard shortcut that can be used to launch an application.

  • A descriptive comment.

  • Settings that control application behavior.

  • Optional data stored in extra data sections.

Source: [MS-SHLLINK]: Shell Link (.LNK) Binary File Format - Overview

Shortcuts are stored as binary files, and can't be edited using a standard text editor. A typical .lnk file looks something like this internally:

00000000  4C 00 00 00 01 14 02 00 00 00 00 00 C0 00 00 00  L...........À...
00000010  00 00 00 46 DC 03 00 02 20 00 00 00 C6 EF 52 BE  ...FÜ... ...ÆïR¾
00000020  10 04 CA 01 C6 EF 52 BE 10 04 CA 01 60 45 8A 67  ..Ê.ÆïR¾..Ê.`EŠg
00000030  20 04 CA 01 00 9A 04 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00   .Ê..š..........

The first twenty bytes are always the following ones: 

4C 00 00 00 01 14 02 00 00 00 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 46

Further reading

Related Question