Ben:
The rules around PE have changed, my understanding is now anyone can run it, its not limited to OEMS anymore. I don't know if you have to have a valid Windows license, but considering you'd be using this to repair a Windows system and not a MAC or Linux system, a case could be made that its intended for use with a valid Windows license. My only concern with PE is I don't know just how broken down it is, what's there, what's not, and what you can add and not. For example, if the MSAA APIs are gone from PE, then no screen reading. Period. A lot of tools, such as Ghost, that large corporations use to do this kind of thing are based on PE so if possible that's where I'd go to.
Ryan
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ben Mustill-Rose
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 2:25 PM
To: Blind sysadmins list
Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments
Hey all; I'm glad that people are interested.
I've been doing a bit of research, and one thing that I keep on coming
up against is legal problems. I mean at the end of the day, to be
honest, I don't really care since I really don't see what I'm doing
wrong in a situation like this, but still, it would be nice to find a
platform which we could use with out breaking some form of eula
especially if this gets popula.
For example, if you use bart pe, your *meant* to have a windows
licence for it for every machine that you put it on even if theres a
windows coa on the case.
This might have changed now, but I remember a while back it was only
oem's that were meant to have access to windows pe for customising the
installation process on machines that they sold.
Xp embedded isn't allowed to be used by consumers; only companies who
make devices such as cash machines and freeview boxes are allowed to
purchase it.
I briefly considdered making a linux distro probably based off
something like vinux, stripping down all the stuff that wouldn't be
needed and putting more helpfull tools on it, but its really not my
area of expertese and I don't kno of any anty malware apps for linux
that fix windows infections and that work with orca.
Ryan:
Glad to see that I was wrong about pe; it only started including sound
support since v2.0 which is what the vista install is based off, so
perhaps you were using a older version - at any rate, drivers do need
to be slipstreamed. I plan to use the collections of drivers available
at driverpacks.net so that people would be able to walk up to most
machines and just boot the cd and start using it.
Xp embedded is a really nice option and I'm glad that windoweyes works
under it - that sounds promissing. There are how ever legal problems
(See above) since your not meant to have it if your a consumer
Obtaining it is a bit of a grey area.
The main problem that I think might be a bit hard to overcome is to
find a gui that nvda or maybe satogo will work with and to make said
screenreader work in a rather stripped down version of windows. This
is why I really want to base it off xp e since it is actually a
propper version of windows that hasn't been hacked to hell and back to
make it boot off a cd - windows code was changed by microsoft to make
it work.
I'll keep you all posted though; as people have said, it really should
have been done before now and since it would be so helpfull it would
be a shame if it didn't work out.
As always, any thoughts are welcome.
Ben.
On 06/03/2010, Ryan Shugart
Hi Ben: I, along with a lot of people I'm sure, would be very interested in this. I'm not sure how easy it'd be to take Windows and turn it into a live CD, its just not ment to run that way. However, there are two options I can think of off the top of my head. Microsoft actually makes a bootable Windows environment called Windows PE. It is freely downloadable, just download the Windows Automated Instalation Kit and PE comes with that. I tried at one point to get NVDA to work under that but was unsuccessful. I couldn't get sound to work at all, but that might have been because I wasn't sure how to include drivers at the time. Also, I don't know if PE has accessibility support. The other option, Microsoft makes a version of windows called Windows Embeded. I think the latest version is based on XP, with a Windows 7 version soon to follow. This is designed for things like settop boxes, thin clients, etc. Quite a few of the thin clients where I work use this. I know for a fact, Window-Eyes at least, will run in that environment just as it would normally so I'dimagine NVDA would as well, or SAtoGO or something like that. I don't know how you get your hands on this though. But as I said, it's a great idea and should have been done a long time ago. Thanks. Ryan
-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ben Mustill-Rose Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 9:53 AM To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments
Hey all, I'm sorry for the ot but I thought that since my question is fairly technical someone here might have a solution.
I've been getting a few machines lately with infections. Pretty bad 100000 icon type infections. The problem here is that most of the removal tools that I use won't run due to things stopping them. One option would be to just format the machines and start fresh, but thats not an option in every situation and if I could get something like malware bytes to run then cleaning the box out may actually be quicker than formatting. Sighted people are able to go into safemode and remove a handfull of nasties, boot into the os normally and continue the removal process but thats not an option for totals due to the lack of sound. What I've currently been doing is removing the drive and slaving it in another box and running tools on the drive that way but thats far from ideal and not always effective. Because of all of these issues, lately I've been thinking about windows based live cd environments and how usefull it would be if they were accessible.
If anyone has done, has thoughts on or wants to work with me on any of the below then I would be very interested:
Does nvda coupled with brltty and a display work under safemode? if so, how well does it cope with things like malware bytes and super antyspyware? How about creating a live cd based on bart pe with a xpe pluggin to allow audio support and slipstreaming nvda along with the sound driver packs from driverpacks.net? would nvda like the gui since its not strictly like windows? As of v2 of win pe which is microsofts answer to bart pe sound is supported. Whilst pe is commandline, how about hacking a premade gui onto it and again, including nvda and sound drivers? Ubcd4win doesn't have sound support, but its a very complete boot cd full of handy tools based on bart pe. Perhaps it would be nice to get nvda with brltty working on this? As a last resort, whilst its not strictly allowed under the eula, windows xp embedded has built in audio support and the same gui found in xp, so I'm guessing that this might be a good one to play with.
What would be nice is if some of us who had knolige about these sorts of things got together and worked on one of the above solutions; I think its something that technicly minded blind computer users as a hole would really benefit from since its nonexistant at the moment.
All thoughts are welcome and once again, sorry for the off topic.
Chears, Ben.
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