HawkPE-43-CD The PC Tech's Swiss Army Knife

A fully-functional WinPE (Windows Pre-Installation Env, based on Windows XP SP2) + Linux (Slax-6.0.7) live CD/DVD ISO. Comes w/ MalwareByets Anti-Malware + McAfee AV,updated as of 25-Jan-10, Windows Explorer, SmartDriverBackup, PCITREE, CPUZ, FoxIt PDF Reader, Firefox, FileZilla FTP Client, Ghost 11, UltraVNC, Partition Magic 8, CHNTPW (now Vista-compatible), WIPECMOS, MEMTEST, the Hitachi/Seagate/WD hard drive diagnostics, etc. Boots to WinPE by default. What is WinPE ? It's a limited version of Windows XP, bootable from your own media, so that you can prepare a naked PC for installation of an operating system or rescue a damaged system when it won't boot properly. WinPE, therefore, looks and behaves like the OS you know best and gives you an opportunity to fix things as opposed to simply wiping the hard drive and redoing the PC from scratch. Starting with HawkPE #41, there are two separate downloads: a CD ISO (without Slax and other goodies) and a DVD ISO (the full treatment.) The split has permitted the addition of a few more diagnostics/tools to the CD image, while eliminating the Linux payload for those who simply never did/will grok/want Linux. For those who've been asking, there's now a procedure to transfer HAWKPE to a USB thumb drive and make it bootable, along w/ other tidbits in the HAWKPE-CHANGES, README-HAWKPE, and HAWKPE-USB-HOWTO text files ! Slax is an excellent example of a portable Linux, which comes w/ Firefox-2+Flash-9, KDE's KOffice suite, multimedia goodies, and the latest K3B CD/DVD burning application. So with a USB thumb drive and your HAWKPE CD/DVD, you can carry a multimedia-enabled computer system, with you at all times. Slax also makes for a more informative diagnostic than the stand-alones like Microscope and PC Doctor. Enjoy.... As a recap, here's the most up-to-date inventory of what's on the disc: A2Hijack AusLogic Defrag Broadcom 44xx-NIC Drivers Broadcom Extreme-NIC Drivers Change NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista Passwords CPUZ Darik's Boot and Nuke DriversPack.net Stand-Alone Driver Installer (DVD Only) ERD Commander 2005 Filezilla Firefox FoxIt PDF Reader Ghost 11 Hardware Detection Tool HDDScan Hitachi Disk Fitness Test HWPnP Intel-10-100-1000MHz NIC Drivers Intel-810 Display Drivers Intel-Extreme Display Drivers Joshua's Key Reader LLFTOOL Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Microscope 2005 McAfee AV Scanner Memtest86 MemtestPlus MHDD Hard Drive Repair/Analysis Utility NSSI NT PswdEdit nVidia Display Drivers Partition Magic 8 PCITree PowerDefragmenter PuTTY Python Sala Password Renew-Beta Samsung HUTIL Hard Drive Diagnostics SeaTools (Seagate/Maxtor) Drive Diagnostics Slax 6 (DVD Only) Smart Driver Backup SpinRite TFTPD32 Treesize Pro UltraVNC Unknown Devive Identifier ViewCHM WCPUID Western Digital Drive Diagnostics 5 Windows File Explorer WinRAR PS: Download all components in order to extract the payload. It has been compressed using 7-Zip, a very good, free data compression utility. Download 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/, ** BEFORE ** downloading the HawkPE payload. AND BE SURE TO READ ALL OF THE TEXT FILES ** AND ** BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS !!! If you're uncertain that the compressed ISO(s) have been transferred correctly, their MD5 signatures are shown below: 953ecb02c4ecc17bacdabca7d13b0232 *HAWKPE-43-CD.7z c04eed5a04f5968f5d92900f8e208f99 *HAWKPE-43-DVD.7z You can download a free MD5 signature checker, HashCheck Shell Extension from http://code.kliu.org/hashcheck/, or MD5 Summer, or anything else that you can find. PPS: Better than UBCD, better than Hiren's CD. [b]This is a true Swiss Army knife for repairing and setting up PCs.[/b] [b]Snapshots:[/b] The HawkPE boot screen: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/greyhawk516/HAWKPE-43-Boot-480.png The HawkPE/WinPE desktop screen: http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll101/greyhawk516/HAWKPE-43-Desktop-480.png There's another payload you should see: From HAWKPE-CHANGES.TXT: 25-Jan-10 - Changes to HAWKPE-43 from HAWKPE-42: ** Updated BartPE/WinPE w/ the latest McAfee defs, Firefox Portable to 3.57, FileZilla Portable to 3.3.1, SYSLINUX to 3.84, and CPUZ to 1.52 ** Per user feedback (via Demonoid), fixed main menu issues w/ correct versions of Memtest86 and MemtestPlus ** Removed AdAware Pro (end of support by Lavasoft), ClamWin (more on this below), Magical Jellybean Keyfinder (replaced w/ something better), Portable CCleaner (never worked well), Portable DriverGenius (never worked well either) ** Added Joshua's Key Reader (to recover Windows XP product keys from dead systems), MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (more on this below), NT Pswd Edit (an alternative to NTCHPW which many find too cryptic), SpinRite 6, and SYSLINUX' new Hardware Detection Module, the DriverPacks.net stand-alone driver installer for Windows XP/2003 (much more on this below) ** Reorganized the CD/DVD boot menu to move the hard drive-related utilities to a sub-menu ** Reorganized README-HAWKPE, to split out the Mini-HOWTOs at the end of the file, in the "hope" that people will read them instead of asking the SAME OLD questions again and again ******************************** Notes ******************************** Made the ramdrive larger by 32MB (to 64MB), to accomodate ClamWin which (per user reports) stopped working w/ #42. **THEN** after playing w/ the various 43-RCs (release candidates), it was decided to deep-six ClamWin altogether ! Regretably, Lavasoft stopped updating AdAware Pro 6 (really good program) and since I never really thought ClamWin did that good of a job *and* was slow to scan, let's just rip them both out and make room for something/anything else. (For the record, I **still** include the McAfee scanner bec it **works**, not as effectively as other AV scanners, but then the alternatives don't operate under WinPE/HawkPE **at all**.) I don't use HawkPE/WinPE *often* (note the word *often*) for actual virus/malware cleaning and favor a much more reliable cleaning method: delete a corrupt Windows and replace it w/ a fresh copy of the operating system. However, when customers insist on retaining the OS *and* their installed apps/drivers, there's MalwareBytes Anti-Malware [MBAM] ! This iteration of MBAM isn't as stable as I'd like, but I've used it successfully for many months (since I discovered the UBCD4WIN project had a working BartPE plugin), so here it is. The biggest caveats are: ** the loader that launches MBAM will only do so *ONCE* per run of HawkPE/WinPE; so if MBAM crashes or simply doesn't load, one must reboot HawkPE/WinPE ** after scanning for malware w/ MBAM, the dialog that saves the log file "works", but the combox for choosing the destination folder for the file doesn't work right away *and* you have to keep pressing the Save button repeatedly to make it do so ** since MBAM doesn't know jack about WinPE, it will try to restart itself on the next launch of Windows itself (to delete certain files); nothing to be concerned about here, just a simple heads-up ** one must explicitly select only what you want to scan for (the bottom three check boxes: files, registry entries, and extra/heuristics objects) on the Settings tab According to the MBAM forum, the program's authors have decided to do an official BartPE plugin, but there's no date for that and the aforementioned announcement was issued in April '09, so don't hold your breath waiting for the plugin. Fact is, malware cleaning is/will always be a hit-miss proposition. The most agressive intruders are very ingenious in finding multiple reinfection vectors (startup points) and strategies, so after spending *hours* performing a deep scan w/ a couple different tools, you may still be SOL (simply out of luck.) Moreover, some intruders damage the TCP/IP stack or Internet Explorer, so even if do purge them, the PC *may* no longer connect to the outside world, requiring a reinstall anyway. When you use MBAM, give it time to load, bec it does take some time (up to a minute) on slower PCs. Anyway, I will continue to keep my eye open for anything else which might help defeat the malware threat. Spybot comes to mind, but I need to free up a lot more space before it will "join the family." Prior to adding MBAM, HawkPE/WinPE already *had* a2-hijack and SysInternals Autoruns, so I want to remind that I haven't completely abandoned the idea of malware detection/cleaning. Briefly, about the other additions: ** Firefox and FileZilla are based on the latest versions from the PortableApps suite. They got a special treatment for HawkPE, where they are wrapped in a SFX which will automagically launch them from COMMON on the RAM drive (R:). However (*AND* this is *IMPORTANT*), they can't be used SIMULATANEOULY, since they share the same folder and each launcher will delete the current contents of R:COMMON, before extracting its own payload. This is intended to cut down on overall failures in HawkPE, due to exhausting all TEMP space on the RAM drive ** Joshua's Key Reader is central to why *I* started using BartPE to create HawkPE/WinPE, ie. to be able to retrieve information from a dead or hopelessly damaged Windows, like a product key ** NT Pswd Edit, just like Joshua's Key Reader, is one of those tools permits to *fix* a broken Windows installation (I routinely encounter customers at my day job, who need help removing an account password), instead of **reformatting** ** There are times when I need to get a quick overview of the hardware in a PC and for this purpose I've added HDT (Hardware Detection Tool) from the SYSLINUX suite ** The DriverPacks.net stand-alone driver installer for Windows XP/2003 (only). In case you need a ready-made source of drivers, to complete an installation of Windows XP/2003, look no further. However, it must be understood that this installer is **ONLY** to be used from within a real, operational instance of Windows, **not** HawkPE/WinPE; just navigate to the DPSADriverPacks.net folder on the DVD, then run the DP_Install_Tool.cmd batch script. The script will attempt to install device support from a tested library of hundreds of mfr's device drivers in the audio, chipset, CPU, graphics, LAN, mass storage, and WLAN categories, for any unknown devices. Have even kicked in the UAA service pack (KB888111) for both XP/2003, in case you have one of those new-fangled HD audio adapters, which will **only** install *after* the UAA upgrade. Do I have to say it, but the DriverPacks stand-alone installer is **ONLY* on the DVD edition of HawkPE ! It's regretable that it's been an entire year since the last release and as always, I hope the next iteration won't take as long to release. I'm hopeful that we can keep a two-month schedule between releases this year. Enjoy.... :-- The Hawk --: ========================================================== 25-Jan-10 ==

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webuser8 (2011-01-15)

Thank you.