The UnSub

http://granturing.blogspot.com/

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/…how-to-boot-windows-xp-off-a-compact-flash-card/

Inspired by the two articles above, I decided to share my own experience building a XP PC running off Compact Flash.

Granturing’s blog covers the use of Enhanced Write Filter in Windows XP. EWF is a driver that write-protects the CF card when XP is running. Effectively, whatever changes you make to the XP after EWF is enabled will be undone upon reboot.

Will’s entry details cloning of a harddisk XP installation into a CF card. It is a good way particularly if you want a lean copy of XP.

My approach is a short-cut by directly installing XP into the CF and using EWF to make XP almost read-only.

Stuff you need

XP CD
The same stuff for any typical XP installation.

A typical Intel-based PC
May be an old PC or something that you want to experiment with…

CF-to-IDE + CF card

3.5” adaptor I bought off Ebay and a speedy 4GB Sandisk Extreme III from a local shop.

Overview

1. Install CF + adaptor (remember the power cable)
2. Boot with XP CD & install as per normal
3. Turn off XP paging (Virtual Memory setting) & restore point (if any)
4. Install any other applications & drivers into the XP
5. Install & enable EWF

First 4 steps are straight forward, I shall not go into those steps. I will elaborate step 5.

Install & enable EWF

It is amazing that you need only 3 files, well 4 files including the registry settings (thanks to Granturing) to get EWF working. Click here to download & save registry file (somewhere).

Registry Settings
Open the registry file with text editor and take a look at the last portion:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ewf\Parameters\Protected\Volume0]
“Type”=dword:00000001
“ArcName”=”multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)“

It is important to get ArcName right.

Go to the boot drive of the TARGET MACHINE WITH XP INSTALLED INTO CF CARD and open up “boot.ini” . The “multi…” string (highlighted) should be the same and look something like:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

If you can’t see boot.ini, it is likely your explorer is hiding system files. Use explorer’s Folder Option to show hidden and system files.

Copy EWF driver files
To obtain the 3 EWF files: ewf.sys (driver), ewfmgr.exe (command program to control the driver) & ewfntldr (NT loader), download XP Embedded SP2 Feature Pack 2007 ISO file

- Extract (or browse) into “rep” subfolder with your favorite tool (eg. WinRAR)
- The 3 EWF files are in “rep” subfolder

We assume now you are in your XP that is running off the CF, with paging and restore point turned off (mine did not have restore point tab) nicely.

Copy the 4 EWF files into the respective destination locationsof the XP running off CF:

ewfntldr         - Backup original ntldr eg C:\ntldr.bak, rename ewfntldr to ntldr
ewf.sys          - Copy to your windows SYSTEM32\DRIVERS
ewfmgr.exe    - Copy to your windows directory
ewf.reg           - Anywhere at the target machine

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU COPY EWF.SYS INTO THE RIGHT PLACE!

I screwed my first installation because I copied the driver file into SYSTEM32 instead of the sub-folder “drivers”. Looking back, I could have use a multi-card reader on another machine to fix it…

Merging Registry Values

Before merging the registry settings downloaded earlier, please check that:
-    ArcName is assigned correctly
-    Permission is set to Full using Regedit (Start -> Run…)
For HKEY_Local_machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root

Once enabled Full for Everyone, double click the registry file to merge.

Cross your fingers, reboot…

Then again, we will not see XPs very soon on fresh desktops but on UMPCs, at least for a while.

For more info, visit:
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/this-guide-is-based-off-my-original-ewf.html

Free boob job... Well not exactly free because Photoshop is NOT free…

My covetous nature brought me woe recently; my PC was infected with a pesky trojan horse. It all started because I wanted to use the paid-features of a shareware for a short while, of course without paying.

Dear friends, avoid installing software from questionable sources (eg. torrent) without a decent updated anti-virus running and a little knowledge of what to do when infected.

By decent, I am not referring Norton or Mcafee. For more info, one can visit http://www.av-comparatives.org/ . My personal favorite is NOD32 2.7 from Eset. The trojan was detected during the installation of the questionable shareware, but the arrogant me brushed off the warning and continued.

Day 2 after the first warning, I noticed more warnings and pop-ups while surfing. It was the wake-up call to do a full-scan. By this time, the infection was quite extensive with most auto-start applications infected, making the clean-up tricky.

After many scans, cleanings and reboots, I was still getting warnings and finally the trojan infected even NOD32 control center application. I was close to giving up doing a local scan and go for pulling out the harddisk to another machine to scan.

Good thing is, I don’t give up easily, I found info from a few forum and learnt about a few interesting tools:

• HiJackThis, a reporting tool from TrendMicro that allows experts to analyze your windows so as to advise help!
• ComboFix, a free tool that fixes some common malware infections

Ultimately, it was a combination of using ComboFix and NOD32 that eliminated the trojan. Moral of the story, there are many good free tools, but not everything is free. Some, have a price to pay.

Do It Yourself: LCD Projector - video powered by Metacafe

I think it may be easier to use small LCD screen players that are widely available (at least in Sim Lim Square) to fit into a projector… instead of tearing a LCD monitor apart… ouch..

No, I do not have an obsession for eggs…
The blown-out egg is good for yourself !