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 <rshugart@pcisys.net> wrote:

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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

...

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

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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

Hmm I took a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/westandard/defau lt.mspx And it looks like they are specifically touting it as being able to fuhction on thin clients. I think a live DVD may be considered a thin client or a "monitoring device", both of which are mentioned. It also touts the ability to connect with server and esktop OS's so using it to repair a desktop OS install probably would be within their boundaries. Looks like a grand for the kit and $90 license for each unit sold if I am reading it correctly. I would buy into any such venture. Frank -----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 4:54 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] ot: live cd windows based environments In actual fact, microsoft seem to have changed the licencing for xpe which is now called windows embedded standard 2009. Your still not meant to put it on a computer, but there offering a trial for download which I'm now downloading and will report back on the result. On 06/03/2010, Ben Mustill-Rose <bmustillrose@gmail.com> wrote: that thats they

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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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