Windows XP In Your Pocket 208
BoredStiff writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the Bart PE Builder software utility takes Windows XP and shrinks the OS to your USB flash drive. Besides converting your mini-drive into an emergency boot disk, you can use the utility to load a Web browser, media burning software and more - to have handy anywhere you go. And by the way, it doesn't violate the Windows XP EULA." From the article: "If your PC has a relatively new motherboard, its BIOS will already include the functions necessary to support USB-attached boot media. If so, you need only make the right selections in that BIOS menu to boot from a USB flash drive. Older PCs, on the other hand, won't accept USB drives as valid boot devices. This means a BIOS update that supports USB boot options is necessary. You can find information about where to obtain such updates from your PC's (or motherboard's) user manual, on the driver CD included with the PC (or motherboard) or on the vendor's Website."
LiveCD Windows (Score:5, Informative)
But Bart's is not the officially sanctioned Windows PE: In the Technet Webcast about Windows PE a Microsoft Program Manager (not calling any names) says: "BartPE is an unlicensed version of WinPE and of Windows XP. Something to we really encourage people to stay away from because it is actually an improperly licensed version of Windows".
"The Man" doesn't like BartPE; all the more reason to use it.
"The Man" doesn't like... (Score:3, Funny)
Fill in the blank...
a) crack
b) dirty needles
c) pot
d) fried food
e) Linux
But mom! all the cool kids are doing it!
Boring (Score:2)
Since it's illegal anyway.. (Score:2)
A Flash Drive image for a dual-boot Linux/Windows system would be cool too!
Re:Since it's illegal anyway.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
DMCA violation? Copyright violation? Breaking your shrinkwrap?
It would seem that given the illegality of this, you'd might was well not do it, and use a different OS, like NetBSD, FreeBSD or some Linux-based OS.
The last thing I need is the BSA (Business Software Alliance) coming to my place of business with a bunch of pigs and poring over my crap to find violations and then hit me for $20K per violation.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:5, Informative)
None, no, no, and ummmm...., no.
It would seem that given the illegality of this,
Why? The OS is Microsoft's. The builder is Bart's. He just bypassed the WinPE, not the OS. You still have to create the LiveCD with Microsoft products and follow the EULA for their OS. The same is true for WinPE products developed commercially and with the blessing of the Borg.
Why? If my customers are using Windows, and I am trying to correct a problem in Windows, so that my customer can continue using... Windows, why would I use some *other* OS? If they were using Linux, I would use Knoppix to fix their system.
The last thing I need is the BSA (Business Software Alliance) coming to my place of business with a bunch of pigs and poring over my crap to find violations and then hit me for $20K per violation.
Then don't use pirated software. BartsPE is his own work, free from Microsoft's code. He just came up with a method for creating a LiveCD that is different from other companies who use Microsoft's PE software.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:4, Informative)
I would use the best tool for the job, which isn't always an OS of the same flavor as the one you're trying to repair.
Case in point, something happened to my XP system that caused the dreaded "Page Fault in Non Paged Area" BSOD every time I booted my system. Microsoft said it was bad memory and after swapping everything in my system out to no avail I popped the HDD in another PC to get the files off it and guess what happened when I booted it. Yep, BSOD. Odd when every HDD analysis tool said the drive was fine. Given that it is a SATA drive I booted the other PC without the HDD connected and then hot plugged it. After about 10 seconds of installing new hardware the PC gave me that ever so lovely BSOD message "Page Fault in Non Paged Area". Hrmm... threw it back in the old PC and booted off the XP install media and guess what the XP setup program did? If you guessed BSOD, you're correct. I didn't even know you could BSOD the setup program, it looks like a DOS app with it's lovely ASCIIness.
So what's a guy to do if he can't use any Microsoft product to repair his system? Well I booted off a Knoppix disk and mounted the HDD without problem, then I copied my files over the network to another PC. Being that I know nothing about Linux and the partitioning program I found in Knoppix gave me no help and a couple errors, I booted off a Fedora Core disc I had laying around and used it's partitioning utility to zap the disk. Then I booted off the XP disc and it let me reinstall the system.
Without a non Microsoft OS, I would have never been able to reformat my HDD or recover any of the files.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
One day, my (Dell) laptop running Win2K decided to barf, so that it would freeze part way through bootup. Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING, not even safe mode, would bring it back. So, I said, "oh, well, at least I've got a working SuSE install on here, and I can get the files off, because it mounts the Windows partition as NTFS..."
So, I get the files off, and use it for a while.
Then, I need Windows again. So, I throw in a Windows XP CD (the one licensed for the laptop), and it freezes if I try
Re:Bullshite (Score:2)
Correct.
It is not his own code.
Excuse me?
It uses Microsoft's own code,
You have evidence of that?
If you mean he used Microsoft's SDK to build his reverse engineer product, then you are probably right. In that case, everyone who has ever written code using Microsoft's products, including these folks [winternals.com] is illegally copyrighting code. Check out the licensing [winternals.com] on the linked website. Those silly people actually believe they own
Re:I know because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pardon me - I suspect you are a FUCKING LIAR - even if you're not currently working for Microsoft. We know everyone who IS working for Microsoft is a FUCKING LIAR, so I'm afraid you're suspect until proven otherwise.
It seems to me YOUR explanation walks a fine line between claiming Bart's PE IS Windows PE and then saying he "reverse engineered" the entire build process.
Well, if the BUILD process is not yours, then the PE is not yours, regardless of its layout. The point of the PE is to enable Windows to run
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:5, Informative)
It says "Q. "BartPE is an unlicensed version of WinPE and of Windows XP."
A. This is not correct, BartPE is not WinPE and will never be WinPE. BartPE builds from Windows XP or Server 2003 files. BartPE is not built from any WinPE file and does not use any files that belong to Windows PE!
Note: Previous versions of PE Builder did instruct the enduser to download certain WinPE network components from the internet when enabling the network support, but v3.0.30 and higher have built-in network support."
From: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ [nu2.nu] under the Legal Information section.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
It's entirely possible, nay likely, that neither he nor anyone in his group checked BartPE for violations. You can be sure that Microsoft's lawyers have done their research into it, but this man himself probably did not. As such, he may assume that it's using components illegally.
It's incredibly irresponsible to go spouting claims when you don't know if they're accurate, but it does not make him a liar--only inaccurate.
Of course, if he
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
I can't wait (Score:2)
Can't wait to play games and browse the web instead of taking calls!
Unlicensed version of winPE? (Score:2)
Its something similar, but its not a 'unlicensed version'.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:2)
Uhm, it is my understanding that Bart pulled the original PE version he had used and built one from scratch. He discusses this very issue on his site.
As for the files used by it, they come from your properly licensed Windows XP copy.
Unless Microsoft is saying their fucking EULA does not permit you to move files from a hard disk to a CD, I think said Microsoft spokesmen is yet another FUCKING LIAR from Microsoft.
Re:LiveCD Windows (Score:5, Informative)
1. It is legal to make a "backup copy" of ANY files from your original Windows XP/2003 media to another media.
2. It is legal to add any other files you wish to the backup media.
3. It is not legal to use a BartPE CD and an installed Windows XP/2003 both at the same time under the same Windows XP/2003 EULA.
4. It is not legal to change any binary files in the process according to the Windows XP/2003 EULA. This makes "winlogon" and "bootscreen" hacks illegal.
5. A BartPE image is (and I quote) "not a properly licensed WinPE". This means that if you want to have a licensed WinPE, you cannot use BartPE. However, you can use a BartPE image under the license of the Windows XP/2003 EULA that came with the BartPE XP/2003 source media.
So, fellow Slashdotters... (Score:3, Funny)
So, fellow [male] Slashdotters, is that Windows XP in our pockets, or do we all just have a case of blue balls?
Re:So, fellow Slashdotters... (Score:5, Funny)
With Windows involved, wouldn't it be the Blue Balls of Death (BBOD)?
Re:So, fellow Slashdotters... (Score:2)
Re:So, fellow Slashdotters... (Score:2)
Since we're talking about blue balls, shouldn't that be Bag Blue?
And to update your BIOS (Score:4, Funny)
And to flash your updated BIOS, just boot the system to DOS using your USB boot drive! See how useful those things are!
Re:And to update your BIOS (Score:2)
mirror and comment (Score:3, Informative)
Why not just boot one of the gazillion linux distros and fix it that way? You'll get a ton more tools for your capacity as well.
Re:mirror and comment (Score:2)
It's just a case of "right tool for the job." Linux is great at recovering files, dumping filesystems, etc. when trying to repair Windows. Windows itself is better at most of the rest of the necess
Re:mirror and comment (Score:2)
Re:mirror and comment (Score:2)
or perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:or perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
the WindowsPE/Bart PE concept is actually pretty handy for setup and deployment of Windows based systems, as well as a great recovery tool for Windows.
Some might reply "try !insert favorite Linux distribution here!", but as stated earlier, when you need a tool for Windows, this actually works pretty well.
Another concept we have implemented here at my place of employment, is to create a small PE partition at the beginning of the drive.. and then install the actual production OS on the secondary partition. When any issues arise, we can remotely reboot to the first partition and run one of many different build/recovery options.
It is interesting that an older tool such as PE is just now making news in some places.
Re:or perhaps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
Me neither.
In fact, the documentation was unchanged from 3.3 to 3.7 but in 3.7 the options they referred to were GONE. They said to click on a particular setting that was absent, they referred to nonexistent files, etc. Hopefully this was fixed in 3.8 but I don't have high hopes.
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
Re:or perhaps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
hmmm...maybe that's why you might still have a use for a bootable CD that will run windows tools and get full read/write ntfs support.
I'm a linux fan as much as the next guy, and I'd rather never have Windows on any computer I own or care for than have to build one of these CDs to fix them, but at the same time, I can see there's things it can do that you just can't do with a Linux live CD
Re:or perhaps (Score:2)
Bart PE works great (Score:5, Informative)
I'm currently running Bart PE off a CD, where I just pop the CD in, boot off it, and a few minutes later I have full access to the machine, and can repair anything that I need to get done...
This USB method will work even better, can just load Bart PE onto my USB drive, load all the applications that I use often, such as Anti-Spyware and more, and go from there....
I wonder if USB drives being so fast, and being read/write, if one day I could just run the entire OS off this USB drive, and pretty much have my complete system working wherever I go....
Bart PE is great... going to try out the USB method right now as we speak...
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:2)
Do you design web pages too? Lots of flash please.
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:3, Funny)
Read/write. (Score:2)
No luck with hard drives? (Score:2)
San
Re:No luck with hard drives? (Score:2)
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:2)
You can do this already with some linux distros like DSL or Puppy.
(Course, you probably couldn't do this with windows because of the required activation.)
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:2)
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:4, Informative)
USB 2.0 = 480Mbps = 60MBps
PATA EIDE = 133MBps
I have no idea what SATA data rates are, but they're bits per second rather than bytes.
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:3, Informative)
Not bits.
Re:Bart PE works great (Score:2)
SATA data rates are... (Score:2)
Abount Licensing (Score:2)
This would be used as a recovery stick.
Re:Abount Licensing (Score:2)
But, IANAL.
Re:Abount Licensing (Score:2)
Is this news, or a dupe? (Score:5, Interesting)
EULA (Score:5, Funny)
Like anyone here honestly cares about that silly text file.
Re:EULA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:EULA (Score:2)
Argh! That'd suck if they forced me to watch cheesy movies!
Rejoice! (Score:2)
Oh, wait.
And the crazy thing is (Score:2, Interesting)
Unbelievable...
Windows bloat... (Score:2)
How fast are USB flash drives? (Score:5, Interesting)
(I assume that if you're connecting it to a USB 1.0 port, the USB connection would be the bottleneck, and you'd get much faster boot times connecting to a USB 2.0 port.)
Re:How fast are USB flash drives? (Score:5, Informative)
if it's cheap, you can be guaranteed that it's around 7MB/s. this is still faster than 52X cdroms (which never reach 52x in the real world). and 15MB/s is faster than 8x DVDs.
solid state doesn't automatically make it fast or faster. it depends on the characteristics of the device in question. flash is getting faster by the year. and there are even some "dual channel" drives which combine more than one flash chip to increase throughput.
next gen flash memory is rated at 40-60MB/s, which
is quite a bit faster than most end-user 5400rpm hard drives and on par with high end disks. of course, you still have the problem of flash being small in storage size. and the biggest devices are no more than 4-8GBs; far too low to be of use in replacing HDs.
still they have their uses. they run cool and take up very little space. these would be perfect for embedded devices and small form factor systems. among many other uses one can conceive of.
Re:How fast are USB flash drives? (Score:2)
Re:How fast are USB flash drives? (Score:2)
They're extremely useful for occasional boot use, transferring data, and running an OS like the Knoppix live CD os that writes nothing to the bootable media itself.
Some screenshots (Score:2)
Some people are way too into this. But when you see M$ Virtual PC running from a RAMDrive, that's just pretty cool.
We use a custom BartPE CD at work for data recovery and malware removal. Makes it easy to run SMART checks and copy off critical data from unbootable HDDs.
And you can run Adaware, McAfee Stinger, HijackThis and other tools on a drive without waking up TSR malware.
Works, but a little limited (Score:3, Informative)
BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation version (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't want to pirate a copy of XP, so I downloaded the evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 [microsoft.com] instead (BartsPE needs at least XP or Server 2003). Although the Server 2003 evaluation version on the harddrive expired after 180 days, the BartsPE CD created from that install still works.
I found that BartsPE was a real pain to build, because you have to hunt down all the software and drivers, and edit *.ini files.
BartsPE is kind of cool, and is better and faster for accessing NTFS partitions than captive-ntfs, but compared to Knoppix (and its derivatives), it's not that useful.
Knoppix has far more and useful software and networks automagically. Unlike BartsPE, you don't need to build Knoppix, you just download it and burn it to CD.
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
So, how exactly do you use Knoppix to (for example) clean viruses and adware/malware, fix corrupt registry or NTFS drive, or undelete files from Windows system?
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
You use this nifty registry editing boot disk to fix the registry [eunet.no]
And you use the linux NTFS tools [sourceforge.net] and TestDisk [cgsecurity.org] to undelete/unformat/rebuild lost or damaged files and partitions. I use these all the time, they work REALLY well.
I carry around a copy of Damn Small Linux [damnsmalllinux.org] on my USB key, customized with above tools and including an image of the registry editing floppy and endless other utilities. Not to mention, DSL Linux gives me full access to the Debian
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
canadiangoose in the post above has replied with a number of specific F/OSS tools to aid with system recovery and filesystem forensics. I would like to add that these tools, and more, are included with a number of Knoppix-derived security LiveCD distros. Here is a partial list:
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
For that reason, I agree that corporations should avoid the risk of using BartsPE in the business environment. The BSA would tend to interpret any ambiguity as a licence infringement, and the company would have
Re:BartsPE and Windows Server 2003 Evaluation vers (Score:2)
Contrast this
Visual Studio .NET (Score:2)
Okay, I'm just looking for help here, so hopefully I don't get flamed. I run both WinXP and SuSE at home, so I'm not a Microsoft fanboy.
This is the question I'm looking to answer:
Can I use Bart PE to carry around a LiveDVD that contains both WinXP and Visual Studio .NET? If not, is there any other way I can do this?
Re:Visual Studio .NET (Score:2)
Not new, but pretty cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyways... The iso resulted in a bootable cd which allowed you to boot into a stripped down Windows client, a windows installer, partition magic, and a whole host of other useful (and obviously unlicensed ) software.
It looked to be a very helpful "toolkit" to have, since you could basically fix any Windows boot issues, in addition to performing formats, partitions, and such, with the point and click familiarity of Windows. I remember just thinking that being able to boot into Partition Magic was a pretty neat trick, much less to have a workable system (not 100% "working", but useable).
If I recall, BartPE walks the fine line of licensing by requiring the user to create the Windows discs, using their own personal software, so the p2p version was obviously someone's creation they chose to share with the world, but it was still very cool! At the time I remember thinking that it was more accessible than Knoppix for the avg. non-*nix person, at which this is obviously aimed.
Unstable on USB flash drives? (Score:2)
"Q: Can BartPE boot from USB flash drives (UFD)?
A: Maybe. Does your BIOS supports booting from UFD as if it were a harddisk? The Windows XP FAT bootsector code does not behave correctly when booting from UFD. Bart already "fixed" the FAT bootsector code. But booting from UFD is not stable at the moment. It is very dependent on what exact hardware is used. Some bioses cannot be set to the correct emulation and other systems hang or abort when the windows USB drivers are loaded. Tricky
USB Problems (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.no-install.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:http://www.no-install.com (Score:2)
For more info on the collection I created a tutorial: http://www.theinfobox.com/index.php/Portable_USB_A pps [theinfobox.com]
Using PE on systems around me... (Score:3, Interesting)
-Windows XP Pro
-Drivers for the system (detects model and installs appropriate drivers, and extra software - like IBM's Rapid Restore Ultra on all IBM/Lenovo machines)
-MS Office (I'm just a monkey here to run this site's deployment, I don't make any decisions)
-Extra stuff used by the client (firewalls on all laptops, burning software on IBMs with burners, DVD players, etc)
All in all, it's a rather powerful (and simple but extendable) automated Windows installer. I like it.
In fact...I think I'll look into this tonight, and tommorow when I'm back in (Hey, overtime is enough reason for me to not play WoW and come to work, seeing as it's 10 blocks to work
Better than just BartPE (Score:2, Informative)
Why isn't there a CD-ROM-based LIVE ver of Win XP? (Score:2)
The Subj is the Question & point of my post.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...
not quite sure about this part... (Score:2)
yeah, right...
re: Windows XP In Your Pocket (Score:2)
Re: Windows XP In Your Pocket (Score:2)
Is that Windows XP in your pocket? (Score:4, Funny)
RAM disk version. (Score:3, Informative)
There's two flavours at the moment. ISO based readonly RAM Disk and the SDI based ReadWrite version. I find the latter the better, as it you don't need a secondary RAM Disk to get things like WMI working etc. The above images ISO/SDI images can be loaded over TFTP (F12 - PXE Network boot), CD, HD, USB, or any other bootable media, for real speedy XP. Oh, once the RAM disk is loaded you can remove the boot media too.
If you're interested, a good place to start is
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=
On a side note there also a SYSLINUX patch http://remile.free.fr/syslinux/ [remile.free.fr], (Needs a bit more work) that will load SDI images. Currently only works with XPe, so not no WinPE Minint functionality, but it's almost there.
Rob
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:2, Insightful)
OSS is all about choice until one of those choices is provided by Microsoft. I love Slashdot.
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:2)
Or for some of us, their problem is our income
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:3, Informative)
The issue is direct support for the NTFS file system.
Other than the Captive utility, Linux can not do read-write reliably on NTFS. Supposedly, even with the Captive utility, the files do not work right with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (I haven't verified this, I read this somewhere.)
The Captive utility is a great idea, but it basically just puts a wrapper around the Windows NTFS file system driver. So it's not that different in concept from Bart's PE. But having native NTFS support is very useful. You can the
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:2)
Runs under Linux - heck, they've got a Linux live-floppy with it on there...
Re:Someone make a bootable image (Score:2)
I've seen boot CDs that boot into different versions of DOS/FreeDOS and also Linux, but never one with XP on it - presumably because distribution of the complete CD would be illegal...
No reason why someone couldn't modify the method of building bartpe though and add a load of other stuff.
Simple uni-boot CD (Score:2)
Simple. Install "virtual pc" on OSX, install windows and linux on that. Then include it on an OSX bootable CD. (or, more likely, bootable DVD)
Re:I'm using bartpe right now (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A7N8X Drivers? (Score:3, Informative)