winXP bootable ramDisk on CD/DVD/USB/NAS

[Ed Dyreen]

This may interest some of you, I've successfully installed a windows XP professional x86 SP3 that only takes 380MB ( uncompressed ) on disk, also known as microXP. My own version, not the one eXperience released although I took his distro as a guide.

I then went further and installed the ramDisk firaDisk driver, copied and compressed the C: drive to this ramDisk and booted the image using GRUB. The compressed image is 400MB of which 320MB used so I have 80MB of free space and about 112MB of free ram on a system which has 512MB of ram. I set a goal to make it bootable on a 512MB ram system as ram is expensive.

I then went further and placed it on a bootable ( no emulation ) cd and booted it.
It should be possible to put the bootable disk on a USB stick.
It may be possible to boot from a NAS using a netBootDisk although I didn't go there yet and this may prove difficult.

I am currently automating the process in VMWare.

I have no knowledge nor experience with bartPE, but the way I do it currently I have the drivers installed and then imaged so I wouldn't be using generic drivers. The drivers is something I never understood about bartPE, like can it use custom drivers based on the type of MAC, can it only use portable apps etcetera, this is where I'd appreciate some enlightenment as I never really understood what bartPE really is not even after reading their site. But I assume bartPE is similar but more like a liveCD where you can't just disconnect the CD-Drive.

From the netboot perspective, if I find the time I imagine I could select the image at boot time based on the unique MAC address.

The main advantage is a system with no internal hardDrive that can be used for various purposes. Based upon the systems that were returned to me after a raid, I know that the police was able to determine which systems I used and when I used them. As a TOR operator the security part is my main interest which I don't need to explain obviously.

I admit it's not very batch related, just sharing this with my batch friends ( I currently have no website nor the time to host one this being part of the reason why, always finding an excuse to do something else, sorry about that , just wanted to share this.

[einstein1969]

Hi Ed!,

I worked for many time with VMWare and I probed some time microXP, SevenLite , BartPE, ....

I searched for many time a compressed bootable ramdisk and I have found only for *nix. But my search termined on about 2008/9....
Then I switched from Ubuntu to Windows. (This is my attemp to boot a phisical windows partition via VMWare under LINUX , but not finished).

I have experensied a forensic recovery tools and many others before being sick.
If you sign in some forum let me know that I sign myself and I try to follow you and help you

Einstein1969

[Ed Dyreen]

That's very nice of you einstein that you are willing to help me in my quest and share your knowledge.

I mainly wanted to inform people that this is possible and I succeeded. As you say, I should indeed find some other platform if I have a question like MSDN or something because this is a batch forum and I hate to violate the rules and set a bad example.

Even better would be if I stop to throw this site I plan to host on the long run, god knows when I'll stop being so lazy.

Maybe someone is willing to host a domain name for me, that would save me the time to configure an apache server, I do look up to that. Maybe some of my friends or family will be willing to do just that. I know for only 10€ I can hire a host but still I try to avoid that, I currently have no internet connection registered on my name.

[miskox]

This is great for system managment. Unfortunatelly I am not in an IT anymore and I don't do any PC repairs or something like that but boot CDs like this are great for such purposes or secure browsing.

I hope you will succeed (though I can't help you).

Saso

[Squashman]

I used BartPE years ago when I worked in I.T. but moved back to programming on the mainframe 10 years ago.

[Ed Dyreen]

Thanks to a close friend I now have a domain. He never uses it he said and granted me full FTP acces to linkRemovedByAuthor.
I will take it from here, the domain will come online soon, and you will find all my projects here.

To all who were so kind to help me out, thanks guys !

[Ed Dyreen]

aaarghh, that's just a webHost, it doesn't support php cgi scripts. I am gonna try running apache in combination with noip.com

[Squashman]

aaarghh, that's just a webHost, it doesn't support php cgi scripts. I am gonna try running apache in combination with noip.com

Yep. That is what I did for several years.

[Ed Dyreen]

ok, I've been fighting with my ISP a little it turned out they were blocking port 80 for my own protection.

But it should work now, this is my dyndns domain http://ed-dyreen.ddns.net you should get a message that XAMPP is installed correctly. At dyndns they claimed they would be advertising but I don't see any adds over here <confused>. Anyways it works now and PHP works too, and it didn't cost me a single penny

I shouldn't be running a webServer on this machine, it wasn't designed for this, this is very insecure

[foxidrive]

But it should work now, this is my dyndns domain http://ed-dyreen.ddns.net

I see this on a white background atm

Notice: Undefined index: Input_LiveAnimations in H:\xampp\htdocs\top.htm on line 10

Notice: Undefined index: Select_Mood in H:\xampp\htdocs\top.htm on line 11

[Ed Dyreen]

I see this on a white background atm

Notice: Undefined index: Input_LiveAnimations in H:\xampp\htdocs\top.htm on line 10

Notice: Undefined index: Select_Mood in H:\xampp\htdocs\top.htm on line 11

That's good news, it's generated by php so at least that's running. this is due to a missing GET $_REQUEST and is easily fixed.

I am more concerned about security, there is none, this system wasn't designed for this, netbios enabled, file and print sharing, I need to configure apache and restrict access. And remove these services. What concerns me is that people can make an illegal request or error's like this exposing the architecture, people should not see this 'H:\xampp\htdocs\' this worries me.

[Ed Dyreen]

Ok, so I've filled the site to give people an idea of what they can expect, only the javaScript page is linked correctly but the demo's are not yet fully functional. But this is what I learn at university. I demonstrate how AJAX works etcetera. The other pages contain error's which I will solve gradually. I provide comprehensive lists of useful links you could implement in your site like XHTML, HTML, CSS, java, validators. This allows you to investigate your site for errors quickly. I'll talk about batch, unattended installs etcetera. Most things are still offline though, visit me once a while as I evolve stuff. And you will find a detailed demo of "winXP bootable ramDisk on CD/DVD/USB/NAS" soon. And if people want to upload stuff to me or create a sub-page that's ok.