The 911 Rescue CD - The Admin Swiss Army Knife

The 911 Disk Builder v1.5 The 911 Disk Builder is a multiple boot disk builder tool, it creates 8 of the most advanced boot disks, all using the ModBoot framework and enables the user to create his own custom modboot disk using an easy windows interface.

911disk_builder_154.exe

Important : The latest build of the 911 Disk Builder is included in the 911 CD Builder v2.0, you don't need to download it separately if you are using v2.0 of the CD Builder.

The 911 Disk Builder needs the Visual Basic 6 Runtime Libraries (1045 kb) to operate correctly.

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD-DVD

What is BartPE and PE Builder?
Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time!

PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment ("WinPE"). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft WinPE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement include in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use.

Please do not contact Microsoft for support on the preinstallation environment that has been created by PE Builder! Microsoft does not provide support for PE Builder or for the preinstallation environment created by PE Builder.

The PE Builder program (pebuilder.exe) runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003. It does not run on Windows NT4/ME/9x. To avoid any confusion, the bootable media's generated by PE Builder should be called by it's nickname "BartPE"!
 

A word from the author
Hi, my name is Bart Lagerweij. I've been creating boot disks and bootable CD-Roms from Dos 3.x (not sure what year) until 2002. I have created the: Corporate Modboot, Network bootdisk, CD-Rom bootdisk, a hardware independent Dos CD-Rom driver eltorito.sys and lots of other tools needed to boot a PC the way I want it to.
 

Slashdot Live Windows Bootable CDs for Sysadmins

Linux writing to NTFS is a VERY BAD IDEA: NOT!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
by sofayam (582239) on Sunday February 15, @08:47AM (#8285124)
(http://mark-andrew.com/)
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)

Re:Why didn't we have this sooner? (Score:5, Informative)
by 1u3hr (530656) on Sunday February 15, @06:53AM (#8284880)
the great thing about live linux cds is they are packed with utilities that can help with diagnostics. This is just a stripped down version of windows.

This is not "just a stripped down version". It DOES contain "utilities that can help with diagnostics". More, since you have to burn your own disk (the author can't redistribute the MS files needed) you can add other stuff than the default utilities.

Re:Why didn't we have this sooner? (Score:5, Interesting)
by LittleBigLui (304739) on Sunday February 15, @08:20AM (#8285038)
(http://www.littlelui.de/ | Last Journal: Sunday June 22, @05:38AM)
Current c't magazine [heise.de] includes a knoppix cd with new-fangled "use original windows NTFS.SYS via wine" drivers. So writing to NTFS in linux is no worse idea than writing to NTFS in windows :)
ERD Commander (Score:5, Informative)
by trezor (555230) on Sunday February 15, @05:32AM (#8284714)
(Last Journal: Friday November 22, @04:56AM)
As far as I am conserned... ERD Commander [winternals.com] from Winternals has allways been my tool of choice.

You can boot up a stripped version of Windows. Unlock admin-accounts. Access local-net, make backups of documents on an otherwise f**ked up harddrive... And yes, there is a command prompt.

And no, I am not affiliated with Winternals, but ERD Commander has been around since NT4.0-days, if I remember correctly.

Maybe this is some kind of free tool, unlike ERD Commander, but it isn't news.

Re:Why didn't we have this sooner? (Score:5, Informative)
by man_of_mr_e (217855) on Sunday February 15, @06:33AM (#8284820)
Ummm.. because Windows *DID* have this quite a few years ago?

Windows PE is just an extension of the XP embedded tool system, which is just an extension of the NT4 embedded tool system available since about 1998.

NT embedded has always been able to boot from a CDRom and run a complete system, MS just formalized this into something called "Windows PE" that Bart copied (actually, about 2 years ago).
Very useful (Score:5, Interesting)
by caston (711568) on Sunday February 15, @03:41AM (#8284466)
I'm a self-employed call-out computer tech (and yes that is the only way I could get work ;) and I use Bart'sPE very often in my job and find it a very useful tool.

You come for the NTFS support and stay for the win32 API. By far the other most useful things are the virus scanner and the networking support. You can easily detect all nics that XP will support outof the box or create a plugin if it doesn't

It's great for fixing Windows machines that won't boot. While I would prefer to use Knoppix and systemrescuecd BartsPE is usually more suited.
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
by WhoDaresWins (601501) on Sunday February 15, @05:10AM (#8284675)
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 [microsoft.com]
for more information about WinPE and its related XP Embedded technologies.
Re:Speaking of ram disk drivers... (Score:2, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, @06:55AM (#8284885)
It's a complete piece of crap. It has like an 8MB limit. That's far too small to do anything with.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft provides the source code for their ramdisk driver [microsoft.com]. If you don't like the limits it imposes, why don't you modify the source? That's what open source advocates always say.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
 
Re:Speaking of ram disk drivers... (Score:1, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, @08:08AM (#8285008)
Try this instead:
AR RAM Disk [arsoft-online.de]
Freeware...
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      It's not meant to be a full system (Score:5, Informative)
      by Sancho (17056) on Sunday February 15, @04:15AM (#8284556)
      (http://127.0.0.1/)
      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.

       
      [ Reply to This | Parent ]
       
        Re:It's not meant to be a full system (Score:5, Informative)
        by WhoDaresWins (601501) on Sunday February 15, @05:02AM (#8284661)
        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 :)
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    • PXE Boot Images (Score:5, Informative)
    by VoidEngineer (633446) on Sunday February 15, @03:58AM (#8284518)
    (http://www.columbia.edu/~rw2117/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 01, @05:25PM)
    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 [altiris.com] or Norton Ghost [symantec.com] 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 [intel.com] 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.
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    •  
        Re:Go live, windows... (Score:5, Informative)
        by pe1chl (90186) on Sunday February 15, @06:18AM (#8284790)
        The problem with using this technique is that some Windows programs require write access in unexpected places. Admittedly this is becoming less of a problem, but there still are older programs around that store configuration data and/or temporary files under their C:\Progra~1\Progname subdirectory :-(

        Worse, when they do and they cannot perform the write, the error information is often useless.
        The program fails in an unclear way (like, nothing happens when you click something) or an error message like "cannot create file" (without filename) appears.

        We run Windows 2000 Pro, and ordinary users of the system have no write access to anything on C: except their profile directory. This often results in lengthy debugging sessions and searches on the Internet to resolve problems. Even Office 2000 has problems running on such a system (the orgchart program does not work when C:\WinNT is not writable).
        Similar problems arise when programs try to write to the registry.

        There have been many times when I wished there was a tool like "strace" on these boxes so that it would be possible to quickly determine what the application tried to do, and why that failed.
        (actually, an strace for Windows appears to exist. next time I have to debug something like this I will try it)
    • Dell Server Assistant (Score:5, Informative)
    by pe1chl (90186) on Sunday February 15, @05:11AM (#8284679)
    The Dell Server Assistant CD, a CD-ROM you get with any Dell server, is a booting CD that loads Windows NT and then runs a GUI program that lets you select a disk layout, an operating system, parameters for the operating system (system name, IP address etc) and then prepares an unattended installation file for that operating system. It asks for the OS installation CD, copies it to the disk, and hands over the installation process.

    This CD uses some commercially available software kit, the name I now cannot recall, to load a Windows NT system into RAMdisk and let it run from there.
    Unfortunately there is no apparent way to exit the installation GUI and go to the NT desktop.
    This CD has existed for many years, and I sometimes wondered if we should make the effort to "hack" it and use it as a system repair tool for NTFS based systems.

    I don't think this CD is anyway related to Microsoft WinPE technology, but I wonder why it does not stop and say "we must now reboot for the changes to take effect" all the time. It runs on a wide range of Dell servers and I don't think they are completely hardware compatible in the strict sense that Windows often requires.
    Re:The only thing (Score:5, Informative)
    by Endive4Ever (742304) on Sunday February 15, @04:06AM (#8284540)
    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.
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      •  
          Re:No, he missed the point. (Score:5, Informative)
          by WhoDaresWins (601501) on Sunday February 15, @06:39AM (#8284841)
          He apparently doesn't realize that Sysprep is not available to most users of Windows XP
          Huh? Who said everyone cannot get sysprep? Look here [microsoft.com] to download the Win2K sysprep and here [microsoft.com] for the Windows XP sysprep (part of XP support tools). It is also available on each and every Windows XP CD at \SUPPORT\TOOLS\DEPLOY.CAB\sysprep.exe. BTW I thought the question was about creating Windows images so sysprep is quite useful since anyone can use it. I'm now wondering how much you have really explored these aspects of Windows.
          As regards the complete system backup, well have you tried using the bultin Windows backup utility to do an Automated System Restore? [microsoft.com] From what I can gather it allows you to do a complete automated system restore from a backup by booting off the Windows CD and it actually writes partition layout and other information to a seperate floppy (or some other media) and the system part of the backup can be written out to a network/external disk or DVD etc. I haven't tried it but I have heard some people talk about it. I'm assuming they were able to use it to good effect. You might want to check it out. AFAIK that should do what you are looking for.
          BTW just because that person was angry or he had an attitude problem doesn't mean that everything he said was wrong.
    • Works for me (Score:2)
    by gone.fishing (213219) on Sunday February 15, @01:04PM (#8287029)
    (Last Journal: Friday April 11, @09:14AM)
    I have been using Bart's PE disk for a few months now. It is esy to use and is a fantastic resue tool that has pulled my butt out of the fire more than once.

    We run Windows 2000 with NTFS and every once in a while the OS blows up on a machine. We gotta get the data off before we re-image it. The data can be worth thousands and our customers don't seem to back up too often.

    I use Bart's PE disk and a USB hard drive, Boot using the PE disk and access the borked drive, pull all the data I can find and copy it to the USB drive then reimage the computer and put the data back on. It has never failed to work.

    We can turn around a borked machine from anywhere in the country in three days (one day in-house and two days in the mail). Our customers are very happy and Bart's PE disk has made our lives a lot easier.

    I'm thinking of writing something for Bart's disk that would automate the process so I can express them the disk, the hard drive, and an ISO of the standard image and let them do it themselves.
    Re:Works for me (Score:2)
    by MyHair (589485) on Sunday February 15, @01:33PM (#8287269)
    (Last Journal: Friday January 02, @12:26PM)
    I do pretty much the same thing with Knoppix, but I usually transfer over the network with either Samba, scp or ftp depending on the situation. Or I'll throw in a backup hard drive on the secondary IDE.

    I'm going to check out Bart's for defragging NTFS, though. My current plan--not yet tested--is to boot into Win2k/xp recovery console, copy all files w/acls to another disk, format the original reserving about 4x the default MFT size and copy everything back. I'll see if Bart's will be better or faster than the recovery console.

    I have a multiuser Win2k PC with an MFT in 867 fragments!! Man that thing is slow. I downloaded a trial copy of Diskeeper and even it can't defrag this MFT. I could probably just reimage it, but I'm looking for a longer term solution because this is a periodic problem. And I don't want to license a defragmenter for every damn PC; what happened to the old days when you could buy a defrag utility disk and use it on one PC at a time? (Furthermore, why can't a multiuser OS keep from fragmenting itself into oblivion?)