Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Live Windows Bootable CDs for Sysadmins

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the Kootwijkerbroek dept.

WhoDaresWins writes "Ever wonder how to make a Knoppix-like live Windows bootable CD (or DVD)? Well its now possible using Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD. It's basically an expansion of the Microsoft's own Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) idea which is a minimal Windows (XP/2K3) based bootable live CD with a command prompt and the ability to run some basic Windows GUI. Bart's PE allows anyone to make a bootable CD using their own Windows XP/2K3 media with Bart's PE Builder. What's more many people have contributed quite a few plugins that allow you to use the BartPE discs as quite a nifty system administration tool and with some work an almost usable quick system."

9 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot... Bring you the news a year late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been available for over a year....

  2. PXE Boot Images by VoidEngineer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, this stuff has been around for like 4 years, at least. We were using this kind of technology at the University of Chicago back in 1999 with WindowsNT images. (The department I worked in was responsible for supporting all of the public-use workstations throughout campus, and we naturally relied on disk imaging technologies.)

    If you buy a product like Altiris LabExpert or Norton Ghost and are very clever, you can jury rig an entire operating system environment onto a CD.

    Oddly enough, we stumbled on how to do this kind of thing while researching Wake-Over-LAN and PXE technologies. Apparently, the system BIOS just needs to be smart enough that it can look at something other than a PCI/IDE/SCSI hard drive for information with which to load a kernel into memory. If your BIOS is PXE enabled, it's smart enough to tell the system bus to look for a kernel on the network card (in the case of a Wake-On-LAN network boot) or on a CD drive (in the case of a CD boot).

    FYI, PXE is Intel's Preboot Execution Environment specification, and is therefore working at the hardware level underneath Microsoft PE (Preinstallation Environment).

    Nonetheless, the hardware capabilities which have allowed Windows to be booted from a CD have been around since 1999, at least, as they are part of Intel's PXE specification.

    Just my two cents...

  3. Re:The only thing by Endive4Ever · · Score: 5, Informative

    Be careful about throwing stones. I remember using the Yggdrasil 'Plug and Play Linux' bootable CD back in 1993. It booted and ran rather nicely on a 486DX-33 with 16 megs of RAM.

    The current Linux systems are bloatware pigs, just like Windows.

    --
    ---
  4. It's not meant to be a full system by Sancho · · Score: 5, Informative

    Among other things, the PE environment (or at least, the ones made with PE builder) are limited to 6 processes. They also reboot after 24 hours (intentionally, no less!), resolution is limited to 800x600, 16 bit color, etc. What this tool is really good for is scanning for viruses, doing repairs that otherwise would be difficult (or impossible) under your normal operating environment, etc. In fact, one thing I just saw PE builder used for was to flash a firmware on a machine that only had Linux on it.

    1. Re:It's not meant to be a full system by WhoDaresWins · · Score: 5, Informative

      No its definetly not limited to 6 processes (both WinPE and BartPE). Also you can use a commandline resolution utility like SetRes.exe to set a higher resolution. Basically it will set it to the highest possible VESA mode that your video card supports. There is however a limitation of 24 hours with WinPE. If you use XPE plugin with BartPE it almost allows you to have quite a Windows like environment with a working browser and all. If you take the time to cusomise your BartPE with all the app plugins you need then it can a quite useful thing.

      And Oh yes I submitted this story so I should know something :)

  5. Re:ESCD (?) as a rescue platform by Achmed · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about Offline NT Password & Registry Editor - saved my life more than once.

    http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

  6. Re:Yeah... by WhoDaresWins · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes it uses a RAM Drive as well the support built into Windows XP onwards for booting of readonly media as part of the components in Windows XP used in XP Embedded. XP Embedded basically just uses the same XP components but with different config (registry, ini file etc). See this -
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/xpehelp/ht ml/xetbswindowspreinstallationenvironment.asp
    for more information about WinPE and its related XP Embedded technologies.

  7. How to do it on a Mac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    OS 9 and older...
    put any Mac installation CD in, restart while holding down the C key.

    OS X
    use Carbon Copy Cloner. This is just a GUI for the UNIX utilities built in. After making a clone CD, follow OS 9 instructions.

  8. Linux writing to NTFS is a VERY BAD IDEA: NOT!!!! by sofayam · · Score: 5, Informative
    That problem seems to have been solved, maybe not with great performance but at least safely usable for emergencies. Its called "captive" and works by emulating a windows kernel and reusing the windows drivers. For more info look at:

    http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

    (haven't used it myself but CT, the local german computer mag, says it's OK and they seldom miss a trick)

    --
    sofa -- so good