Photo app still finds photos opened by date, after using many cleaning Windows prgms

I'd never used the pre installed HP MediaSmart (touchsmart) photo app till yesterday. To my surprise, it found (listed by date opened) many photos that aren't stored in any "normal" Vista Pictures / My Documents type locations.

In Vista hm prem x64, I regularly use various prgms to clear private data from apps, windows explorer, registry, etc.

These cleaners always clean registry MRU, recently opened keys, etc. Also, all the usual places Windows stores recent activity.

I don't have "Save list of recent folders / files" enabled in Start Menu properties.

No photo viewing apps I use are set to save recently opened files / folders.

I did thorough search of registry for a couple of these photo names, and nothing came up (as I would've guessed).

But, HP TouchSmart Photo is finding this list somewhere. I'm fairly familiar w/ where Vista stores a lot of recent file activity in the Registry.

I looked at most all of them - they're all empty.

Where / how could this photo app be finding such an extensive list of photos by date? Is it just searching the HDD for any / all photos & listing them by their "date modified?" Not that it's getting a list of photos I actually OPENED, just that they're on the HDD? This is sort of what I suspect, but not sure.

Thanks.

 

SOLVED?
I believe the HP Touchsmart Photo app was (had been) searching the HDD all along for ANY photos, not ones I'd necessarily recently opened.

It must have had a background file running all along, because the very 1st time I started the app, it came up almost instantly, showing pretty much all the photos, from diff drives, categorized by yr.
Most likely either \HP Media Smart\smartmenu.exe, or \touchsmart\media\TSMagent.exe

I believe it was using the "date modified" value on each pic to arrange them by yr, because some photos I very recently got (like a family member sent me), were under "2007 Photos" for example.

Bottom line: I don't think there was a list of photos it was finding in the registry or My Pictures, etc. Just searching the HDD for all photo files.