The Genius Drive Revamp Project

(OR Creating a VistaPE USB bootable thumb drive with PGP by Varun Tansuwan)

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X. General Usage - Instructions

VistaPE

1.Put USB thumb drive or hard drive on computer and do a cold boot (warm boots usually do not properly detect the bootable option for USB drives).

2.For Dell/Lenovo hit the F12 button during the startup sequence to get the Boot Menu and go ahead and select the logical USB drive to boot from.

If you have problems with detecting keyboard and mouse please make sure to use a plain USB keyboard (no USB hub, no multimedia options, no fingerprint reader etc.) if it still doesn't work make a note of it. Also note that there is a vistape.hwpnp in the root of the drive. You can rename the current vistape.wim to vistape.main and rename that vistape.hwpnp to vistape.wim and test booting with that. It may detect the keyboard/mouse better. If you have to do this or if it still doesn't work please report it on the Genius Drive - Platform testing page.

3.If it boots successfully you should see the Grub4Dos Boot menu first

VistaPE – where all the real tools are at.
MemTest86+ - for testing memory can take a looooooooooong time depending on computer speed and amount of memory. Figure 15-30 minutes minimum and more likely 2-4 hours perhaps as much as a full day for a much more reliable test.
Parted Magic 3.6 – For adjusting/repairing partitions. Untested USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Theoretically you can resize Windows partitions fine using this tool. I’ve not verified this and you should always proceed with extreme caution when resizing/repairing partitions. Backup your data first is the golden rule here. Let me know if this works for you.
DBan 2.0.0 Beta -  (Darik’s Boot and Nuke, untested, please let me know if it works successfully, secured wipe of hard drives, there’s no coming back from this so MAKE SURE you really want to lose the drive’s data, be sure to select the correct hard drives to wipe, and use M to select the DoD 5220.22-M option for 7 pass secure wipe using American Department of Defense 5220.22-M Standard wipe, F10 to start)
4.When the drive boots you should see the standard Vista white preboot-bar then the normal Vista startup sequence.

5.Once the desktop starts to load you should see a dialog window. VistaPE Loader. Preparing System. When this gets to the point of Press any key for skipping please do not press any key, let it start to detect plug and play devices. If you have problems with keyboard and mouse detection you may want to try bypassing this step for a particular model. Please note this if you have to and report it to the Genius Drive - Platform testing page.

Main Tools:

CubicExplorer – This is the main file explorer (note that the Map network drive button doesn’t work here, use PENetCfg to map network drives). This is pretty nice actually because you can use tabs for explorer windows. Standard copy/paste/move options are available.

PENetCfg – Use this to map network drives. You can also create a share (untested, please let me know if this works). Note if there is no detected Network card please record the make/model and report it on the Genius Drive – Platform testing page.

Sala’s Password Renew – Use this to change a local user password or to create a new local admin account.
a)       First on the right bottom corner, use the Select a Target button.

b)       Then select the proper Windows directory e.g. c:\windows

c)       then click either Renew existing user password or Create new Administrator user. It will prompt you for the relevant info.

d)       Once entered, click the Install button on the left side. It should say successfully created/changed etc.

e)       Click the Quit button then use the main Start Button and shutdown/reboot the machine.

WinSCP – SFTP/FTP client.

"By default this has two profiles, one for cardinal.stanford.edu and one for crc-resources.stanford.edu this will allow you to transfer files to/from crc-resources.stanford.edu Logins are your SUNETID/Password. The default will send you to the People directory (/Volumes/promise/People) where you should see your personal folder available. You can change directory to /Volumes/datastore/Resources to access the CRC Resources folder. Here under Software then mac and windows you should be able to find many of the software packages used by CRC." Note: This is only applicable to ITS - CRC 

System Information Viewer – A large collection of diagnostic information on the system.

Programs\Administrative Tools\Registry Loader PE – This allows you to mount the local machine’s real OS’s registry. Select the correct Windows directory at the top (using Remote Windows Directory Button). Then pick which System Hives you want to load and if you want to you can select a user’s ntuser.dat file to get a User Profile Hive for the user. Everything that actually belongs to the real system will be prefixed under the HK?? Roots as _C_ etc. for example.
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\_C_SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

 Other Tools:
 
Programs\Archivators\7-Zip
Programs\Data Recovery\GetDataBack
Programs\Diagnostic\Advanced PCI Info Utility
Programs\Diagnostic\CPUID Hardware Monitor
Programs\Diagnostic\CPUZ
Programs\Diagnostic\HDDScan
Programs\Diagnostic\HDTune
Programs\Diagnostic\Unknown Device Identifier
Programs\Disk Tools\Disk Partitioner
Programs\Disk Tools\Ghost11
Programs\Disk Tools\MbrFix
Programs\Disk Tools\MBRWizard
Programs\File Tools\Far
Programs\File Tools\Foxit PDF Reader

Programs\File Tools\HxD


Programs\File Tools\Windiff
Programs\File Tools\XnView Image Viewer
Programs\Network Tools\Opera
Programs\Network Tools\Putty
Programs\Network Tools\Remote Desktop Connection
Programs\Network Tools\Ultra VNC Client/Server		 Great tool for compression/decompression.
Data Recovery tool from www.runtime.org
Beware using IRQ\Routing Table or BSOD possible.
Will be removed in next revision
General CPU/Memory Identifier
Hard Drive test tool.
Hard Drive test tool.
Identify hardware, can be used to backup drivers
BACKUP First before using!
Norton Ghost disk imaging software
General tool for managing MBR’s
MBRWhisky tool for managing MBR’s
Slim explorer for navigating older systems or low res systems
PDF viewer

Hexeditor (Note: won’t work if USB drive doesn’t detect after boot)

Simple file/directory Difference checker
Image browser
Internet Web Browser
SSH Terminal program
MS Remote Desktop Connection (no NLA support)
General VNC Client/Server (Server not working currently)
                 

Command prompt tools: (open a command prompt and type these in)

pgp – This will print out the list of commands necessary to use PGPWDE to mount an encrypted disk/volume. Note the double-dashes for switches

pgpwde --enum
pgpwde --disk 0 --status
pgpwde --disk 0 --auth -p “xxxx”
pgpwde -h

radis1 or radis2 – Same as the CRC Tech CD/Original Genius Drive, this will initiate a command to map the network drive and then start a radis setup. Note: Only applicable to ITS- CRC

MacOSX

1.Do a cold reboot and while booting hold down the Alt button until you see the GENIUSM drive to boot from as an option. Select the drive and click the small button below the drive icon to boot from it.

2.Once fully booted you should have familiar options available to you.

Forward to XI. Resources

Back to IX. Creating ISO/USB Drive

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Last Update 06-25-2009