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Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

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In a recent discussion I asked for some suggestions for applications that should be included on a recovery/utility CD. Many responses revolved around the Ultimate Boot CD Web site and the Bart Preinstalled Environment.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?PromoFeature=discussion&PromoByPassed=1&forumID=3&threadID=156350
http://ultimatebootcd.com/
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

[b]I’m curious ;\
How many members are using BartPE for recovery purposes? The UBCD site explains the process, but are there any caveats TechRepublic members should know about before creating their own bootable CD?[/b]

Topic

Windows Ultimate Boot CD

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

I’ve found the BartPE boot CD to be extremely useful. Fantastic for recovery of W2K+ systems…

However, when I tried to get the Windows Ultimate Boot CD working with the extra BartPE utilities, I found that though in a boot emulator, it worked fine, my ISO image wouldn’t boot…

I made about ten CDs trying different settings and then gave up…

Anyone else have this sort of problem?

Cheers,

Jx

re wubcd

In reply to Windows Ultimate Boot CD

hmm interesting. I use it along with even more stuff I’ve added and have no problems at all. Every iso made works. have you contacted the guy that makes wubcd? he gives his email for limited support. I believe there is a faq there also.

ISO Image

In reply to re wubcd

I haven’t tried him…. I might give it a go…

I’ve been told that there is a utility that will convert one type of ISO image into another, so perhaps that might make it work better…

Thanks for your help…

Cheers,

Jx

Barts PE

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

I have found Barts PE to be very useful. It gives you the power of Windows XP and you can add any utility you need to the CD. This means you are running windows XP as administrator from the CD and can access any disk that XP can access and do what you need to any of the files. This allows you to fix boot problems, password problems, virus and other malware problems and get the disks in good shape to boot again even with severe problems.

System Limitations

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

Am currently using my own build of Barts PE. Have most of the usual stuff and have sucessfully run it on a wide variety of hardware from old Celeron 300’s to current P4 systems. Generally you will need 128Mb of RAM as any less will not allow it to work.

There are lots of sites with ready made plugins to add extra apps to the build, best place to start looking is http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php

They have excellent forums and plugin’s written for Barts PE as well as other info and support on bootable rescue CD’s

(Just checked and the forums appear to be down at the moment )

Very handy and I highly recommend it.

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

I have been using an earlier version of Bart’s CD maker that I’ve loaded with my own favorite DOS based utils. But I am looking for an inexpensive program that writes to NTFS. If nothing else PE gives you an entry to NTFS volumes to run scans for viruses, ad-bots, etc.

well worth it

In reply to Very handy and I highly recommend it.

I have recovered at least three Windows XP machines that were non-bootable (safe mode, last known good didn’t work)by booting up with our customized Bart PE cd and using the registry restore wizard plugin by viceroy to restore the registry to the last saved restore point. Then restarted the machines and they were working perfectly, total time of about 6-8 minutes to rectify a major problem. There are many great plugins available for free but the data recovery tools cost. We are using GetDataBack but I have not had the need to use it yet.

Problem with BartPE and Dell GX260

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

Has anyone gotten the network drivers to load from the BartPE disk for this system. I have tried the Intel and Dell drivers with no luck.

adding network drivers

In reply to Problem with BartPE and Dell GX260

how did you add the nic drivers. Did you follow the instructions on how to make a plug-ins?
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
I have sucessfully added many drivers – NICs or other devices and so with great success.

Del GX260 Network drivers

In reply to adding network drivers

Thanks, I got them working. I missed one of the files

Dell GX260 Network drivers for BartPE

In reply to Del GX260 Network drivers

I am trying to get BartPE working on the GX260 intergrated NIC (Intel 1000MT). I have tried Dell driver, Intel driver, and Additional Network Adapter drivers plugin from n4tune8. If you don’t mind sharing how did you managed to get the network driver working on GX260. Much appreciated.

Adding NIC drivers by means of Plug-ins?

In reply to adding network drivers

JO_BEE,
You might be able to give me a helping hand. I have tried making a BartPE on GX260. I have spend a few days to get the NIC drive to work, but no luck. I have tried Dell driver, Intel driver, and Additional Network Adapter drivers plugin from n4tune8. If you don’t mind sharing how did you package NIC drive via Plug-ins. Much appreciated.

Building a recovery CD with UBCDWin

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

Hi, I have just starting building some boot CD’s using BartPE and UBCD and UBCDWin. Each CD is excellent. What I would really like to add is a utility which would allow me to start and stop drivers and services like the ERD Commander does. Does anybody know of a freeware/shareware utility that will do this?

Manual Registry editing

In reply to Building a recovery CD with UBCDWin

Hi,

I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but you *could* do the registry editing manually. In fact, i am almost sure that most of the programs that Winternals has on ERD Commander can be replicated using built in windows features.

One idea for your specific scenario, run a command prompt, do a “Reg Load HKLM\LocalSYSTEM C:\windows\system32\config\SYSTEM” (assuming C:\windows is your windows folder) then run a registry editor, and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\LocalSYSTEM\Services\ControlSet001 and there is all of your drivers & servers.

You may need to read up on how to disable services, but it is just a minor registry change and of course this is not as graphical. But if you could find a programmer to do all this stuff, i am sure they could develop an application to facilitate this. I have other programs I use command line / batch files for and have been using BartPE for over a year and a half now (actually I have an amazing PE disk going now…).

no support from MS

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

Microsoft does not support the BartPE environment, any problems you might run into you are left to the user community for support. this may be bad in a crunch.

BartPE is a free rip off of an MS app

In reply to no support from MS

MS don’t support it, because Bart (being a bit of a boot disk God from back in the Dos days) – kindly made a free version of the app that MS produced to do a similar thing…

It’s been a while since I visited the site, but whilst Bart takes care to ensure that he keeps everything legal, there are perhaps potential licensing issues with the BartPE that MS wouldn’t like.

On the other hand – if you’re just using it for a recovery tool then you probably don’t need much MS support…

Anyone who is interested – as far as I can see, the best Windows recovery boot disk is http://www.ubcd4win.com/ – it’s got just about every app you need on there…
On the other hand – if you’re tempted by the dark side – there’s about a million live distributions of Linux which give you a loads of posibilities for recovery…
Recovery – and security testing – try out Knoppix, Whoppix, and Helix, to name just a few…

All can mount NTFS partitions to access “lost data”, and can give you all sorts of tools to restore your machine…

Enjoy…

Just Tried it Myself

In reply to Bart’s Preinstalled Environment

Had an XP machine throw a wicked BSOD when I was reinstalling the MS Netware drivers. Tried to Ghost it back to life, and was told the HDD had bad sectors.

Had the Barts’s link bookmarked and figured this was the time to use it. Other than one network file copied wrong from the i386 CAB to the C:\PEBuild3xxx folder, it was muy smooth. A few minutes later, I’ve booted it up with the Barts CD, and was able to format and chkdisk to my heart’s content. Then the Ghost went like a breeze. Haven’t added any plugins yet, but will make sure I have the right NICs on it.

It’s worth it space and time in 99.9999999% pure latnium.

[Author]

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