On Monday, 19 November 2007, Philip.R.Schaffner at NASA.gov wrote: <snip>
A good toolkit for Windows is the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows at http://www.ubcd4win.com/
Phil:I found that Grisoft AVG (I use their free anti-virus program in Windows) has a free tool: AVG Anti-Rootkit Free http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-rootkit-free/lng/us/tpl/v5#details and I downloaded that.
It uses BartPE, discussed earlier, but adds a lot more tools, including rootkit and antivirus scanners. A clean install after data recovery is still the best bet.
I'll look into Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, after I get this box up and running again. I will either get that or BartPE. Thanks!
I recovered the data from the NTFS partition this morning, so I am ready to "learn by destroying". The consensus of opinion from Ross and you is that I should bite the bullet and do it correctly. Wipe the HD and do fresh installs. Time consuming it will be (especially installing the Windows aps), but, I will have a better system and I will learn. For several months, I've wanted to install/use the free VMware Server, but I don't have space on the HD to do much with it now. One of the suggestions, from Alain, was to have WinXP running virtually, under CentOS. I am contemplating devoting about 75% of the HD capacity to CentOS. Installing a lean WinXP in English, and dual boot with CentOS, and then install VMware Server and install WinXP in English, in virtualization.
The "KISS" technique (fdisk /mbr, run the anti root kit program, reinstall GRUB and restore grub.conf) is tempting and would probably work, and would be much faster, but I still wouldn't have the kind of system I will have with the more time consuming approach.
All the ideas everyone who has responded to this thread have thrown into the basket for consideration are deeply appreciated! Lanny
Lanny Marcus wrote:
On Monday, 19 November 2007, Philip.R.Schaffner at NASA.gov wrote:
<snip> > A good toolkit for Windows is the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows at > http://www.ubcd4win.com/
Phil:I found that Grisoft AVG (I use their free anti-virus program in Windows) has a free tool: AVG Anti-Rootkit Free http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-rootkit-free/lng/us/tpl/v5#details and I downloaded that.
It uses BartPE, discussed earlier, but adds a lot more tools, including rootkit and antivirus scanners. A clean install after data recovery is still the best bet.
I'll look into Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, after I get this box up and running again. I will either get that or BartPE. Thanks!
I recovered the data from the NTFS partition this morning, so I am ready to "learn by destroying". The consensus of opinion from Ross and you is that I should bite the bullet and do it correctly. Wipe the HD and do fresh installs. Time consuming it will be (especially installing the Windows aps), but, I will have a better system and I will learn. For several months, I've wanted to install/use the free VMware Server, but I don't have space on the HD to do much with it now. One of the suggestions, from Alain, was to have WinXP running virtually, under CentOS. I am contemplating devoting about 75% of the HD capacity to CentOS. Installing a lean WinXP in English, and dual boot with CentOS, and then install VMware Server and install WinXP in English, in virtualization.
The "KISS" technique (fdisk /mbr, run the anti root kit program, reinstall GRUB and restore grub.conf) is tempting and would probably work, and would be much faster, but I still wouldn't have the kind of system I will have with the more time consuming approach.
All the ideas everyone who has responded to this thread have thrown into the basket for consideration are deeply appreciated! Lanny
I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create (at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and a larger one for data. then use norton/symantec ghost to generate images of your system partition, and whenever windows starts fucking up just squash it with one of the images. Takes a few minutes to restore a clean winXP, a bit longer upgrading drivers and apps and remaking an image if necessary (if the latest snapshot was old). I usually keep several images: post-install without any drivers, that plus OS tweaks (shutting off useless MS junk etc), that plus latest drivers, and same plus apps. This works wonders for me! No more headaches with my gaming machines (or my friends' and family's PCs ;-) )
you can probably do this with linux tools as well if you don't want to buy ghost.
regards, Nicolas
On Nov 20, 2007 9:19 AM, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg@imag.fr wrote:
I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create (at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and a larger one for data.
I'd second this, but I'd say it's much better to go in the direction of 10G than 5. I installed WinXP on a Mac Mini (BootCamp) with 5GB on the internal drive and everything else on a firewire external drive, and now after about a year of automatic updates that 5GB is so nearly consumed that I'm having to shuffle things around by hand to keep it working. It's just too damn difficult to prevent Windows software from dumping crap on the C: drive (and then referencing its location in the registry so it becomes nearly impossible to relocate it).
I top that with another 10 - 20 GB, assume you got a DVD iso to burn, so you make a copy and due to the effective native copy file feature, expect a copy to be placed in some temp folder on C: why you need another 5 - 8 GB free and then the space the DVD occupies.. This is also true if you copy between 2 SMB shares, even if none of them are on the local machine, it's neat iand effective isn't it?
On 11/20/07, Bart Schaefer barton.schaefer@gmail.com wrote:
On Nov 20, 2007 9:19 AM, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg@imag.fr wrote:
I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create (at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and a larger one for data.
I'd second this, but I'd say it's much better to go in the direction of 10G than 5. I installed WinXP on a Mac Mini (BootCamp) with 5GB on the internal drive and everything else on a firewire external drive, and now after about a year of automatic updates that 5GB is so nearly consumed that I'm having to shuffle things around by hand to keep it working. It's just too damn difficult to prevent Windows software from dumping crap on the C: drive (and then referencing its location in the registry so it becomes nearly impossible to relocate it). _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
on 11/20/2007 12:12 PM Nicolas Sahlqvist spake the following:
I top that with another 10 - 20 GB, assume you got a DVD iso to burn, so you make a copy and due to the effective native copy file feature, expect a copy to be placed in some temp folder on C: why you need another 5 - 8 GB free and then the space the DVD occupies.. This is also true if you copy between 2 SMB shares, even if none of them are on the local machine, it's neat iand effective isn't it?
It makes things easier for the forensics specialists since Windows has to have a copy of everything it touches. ;-P
Nicolas Sahlqvist wrote:
I top that with another 10 - 20 GB, assume you got a DVD iso to burn, so you make a copy and due to the effective native copy file feature, expect a copy to be placed in some temp folder on C: why you need another 5 - 8 GB free and then the space the DVD occupies.. This is also true if you copy between 2 SMB shares, even if none of them are on the local machine, it's neat iand effective isn't it?
On 11/20/07, Bart Schaefer barton.schaefer@gmail.com wrote:
On Nov 20, 2007 9:19 AM, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg@imag.fr wrote:
I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create (at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and a larger one for data.
I'd second this, but I'd say it's much better to go in the direction of 10G than 5. I installed WinXP on a Mac Mini (BootCamp) with 5GB on the internal drive and everything else on a firewire external drive, and now after about a year of automatic updates that 5GB is so nearly consumed that I'm having to shuffle things around by hand to keep it working. It's just too damn difficult to prevent Windows software from dumping crap on the C: drive (and then referencing its location in the registry so it becomes nearly impossible to relocate it).
OK, so it depends on what you want to do under windows I guess... the box I'm writing from is my main home computer, and has a 3G windows system partition... it's doing fine! Today I'ld probably make that 5G (this 3G partition dates back from feb 2005), but certainly not more than 10G but then I only boot into windows for games and the occasional MS office document that I absolutely *must* work on and that doesn't look normal in open office. if/when free space gets low, it's time for a ghost cleanup. In fact this way you don't even need to defrag the system partition, just ghost it! it's much faster (of course you want to defrag before making images).
I really think a regular ghosting is a great MS hygiene habbit, and if the partition is too big you'll be tempted to put useful stuff on it
BTW I wouldn't want to use software that needs 5G of free space somewhere that I can't configure - that's seriously broken! use another software, or if it's dual boot just burn your dvds in linux
enough rambling, just think about what you want to do with your windows before deciding on your system partition size
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Bart Schaefer -
Lanny Marcus -
Nicolas Sahlqvist -
Nicolas Thierry-Mieg -
Scott Silva