Hi, As someone who has used XP embedded I am not sure how it will work on a live system either, it was pretty much just like XP Pro to me with bits removed. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Shugart Sent: 06 March 2010 23:29 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments I'm sure you could, especially if you used the Windows Embeded version. The one problem I'm curious as to how they got around is that Windows XP at least doesn't necessarily like being moved from hardware platform to hardware platform. An ideal Windows live environment should be able to run equally as well on an old P4 box with 512MB ram and an old soundblaster card, to the most modern laptop that's dual core and 64-bit and all. I realize that's not 100% possible, but I gues what I'm saying is the environment should be reasonably flexible, and my understing is XP just isn't. Vista's better, and Win7's supposed to be much better. I'm not sure the media matters, most modern machines can boot from USB, so if USB is easier than CD I say go for it. Of course there's the matter of independently configuring the boot options of a machine, but that's another thread. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 4:01 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments I have seen folks get XP to run off of a Thumb drive. I wonder if a live DVD could be made based on one of those projects? -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Shugart Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 3:17 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments 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. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins