Windows Live Cd And its an MS-free project

[rantsh 0]

If you hadn't been by Tom's Hardware dot com lately, then you haven't seen the Green USB flash drive with a windows logo on it (which really freaked me out).

So to make it easy to all of you this is an article at tom's (click Here to read the article) about PE Builder which is a project NOT endorsed by MS

PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment ("WinPE").

In a nutshell I'm going to quote the author of the project so you may see what it does.

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!

...

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/BartPE. It does not run on Windows NT4/ME/9x.

Now there you have it, you may create a COMPLETE Win32 interface boot CD so you can boot Windows every other day (or everyday if you have XP home) when it *COUGH* dies *COUGH*... *Sneeze*MICROJUNK... [sorry I Must be catching the flu hehehe]... Either way, the point is that you could jumpstart your windows box, backup all your precious data and prepare yourself to format/reinstall windows for the millionth time (this year)

On the other hand, one could've expect this kind of solution coming from Microsoft, but then again, is been years since knoppix came out and they still didn't get it... So one more time, the 'effective' solution comes from open source or independent projects... (I know it's redundant but I'm using this word here...) AGAIN!!!!!

I'm willing to try this software later this month (when I have some spare time) and I'll come back to you on this one... for the moment I can just say that it has got potential (maybe if you boot from a CD everytime the registry can't screw up and then MAYBE we could get to the utopia of a windows that doesn't show a bluescreen... every 20 minutes...

For all the MS/Windows lovers out there, I present my apologies for making fun of windows, but is just to DA*N easy to let the chance pass by - not to mention how fun it is (not that you loose your data or productivity, that's in fact a very serious issue, but it's funny to think that there's actually people who believe that the MS products are THE ONLY/BEST OF THE BEST or even decent solutions)...

Well, I'll see you around and if anyone has already tried this PE Builder thing please let me know your thoughts so I can save some time, instead of installing and reviewing this utility...

[abhishek 0]

Not tried it yet but seems worth a try

[wutske 0]

I've tried it (not for saving data tough) and it works amazingly good. You maybe can't install every program you want, but there are a lot of them available (tough not every program is easy to install on the cd).

Side note, I did use Ultimate Boot CD4win which uses BartPE to create the cd w/ all the tools: ubcd4win

[hatim 0]

I think its not bad to take cues from Live CD projects (espcially Linux ones)..buit being MS they should have done it them selves...they lack innovation big time.

[szupie 0]

Wow, Windows on a 256 MB flash drive? I didn't know it could be that compact. Though, I think you can only install a few basic programs on it, so it'd be pretty crippled. Would a USB 1 be quick enought to run Windows? It'd be annoying using an OS that lags a lot.

[rantsh 0]

It's a CD so you can't expect to be able to install everysingel service and crap that MS gives in windows. And remember that it's not endorsed or supported by MicroSoft it's an independent project.I really believe there's no more use to this CD but to have the ability to boot when Windows Crash, so you can backup your data and then re-install....

[Cassandra1405241487 0]

I don't understand how this could be legal, unless he includes a license from Microsoft with every copy he sell (or gives away, for that matter).

[wutske 0]

I don't understand how this could be legal, unless he includes a license from Microsoft with every copy he sell (or gives away, for that matter).

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There isn't realy a thing illegal about it, because it uses ur own WindowsXP cd.

And, you run on a single machine (the one that crashed) and you don't run them together (because the other install crashed)

 

I wouldn't realy bother too much about it, I never do