I'm trying to make an installer for a program and for that program to work I need to alter a few important windows files
I'm trying to make it like this:
plug in the usb
boot from the usb
wait for the installer to finish
boot windows and taaada program installed
I used all kinds of variations of Ms-Dos to do this but all of them don't copy my program's files or fail at something else
Any idea how to make something similar ?
You could try NTFSDOS if you want to keep being in DOS, or you could use some Linux distribution and mount the harddrives partition that way.
My task is to load a program i built separately from the OS (it performs a set of actions on the system files so it must be done before the OS boots) on an embedded system. yea i know...
I chose to place it in a clean winpe.wim (got it from Windows AIK). everything works fine on modern bios computers, but when i try it on the embedded system i get stuck at the ACPI boot check: the bios on this system is non-acpi (standard hal)
restrictions : replacing BIOS / getting other winpe aren't options for now.
can i somehow disable the acpi-compatibility check in the winpe i got? through bcdedit maybe? any advice that will help me with this riddle is very appreciated.
also- the boot is performed form a bootable CD
Figured a workaround, if anyone ever needs this:
shrinked the partition on the embedded system and created a second one
installed another win2000 there and placed my program to run at start up
disabled explorer.exe and all unnecessary components
now this partition serves as PE replacement and can perform actions on the main os files if the user boots into it and runs my program
I have a few VMs in Parallels 11, running several different versions of OS X, for automated software builds.
I recently copied those VMs to a different host, so I'd have a second set to fall back on in case of a hardware failure.
The problem: the copied VMs have the same Hardware UUIDs as the corresponding originals, and that causes a problem backing up the VMs with Time Machine, since Time Machine links backup images to machines by their Hardware UUIDs. If you have two VMs with the same Hardware UUID, Time Machine running in those two VMs will try to write to the same sparsebundle file on the backup server.
I googled the issue and found this: http://kb.parallels.com/en/11197 -- but those instructions don't work for Parallels 11: when you double-click the pvm, it is imported immediately, without asking whether it was moved or copied. When I first imported the copies, Parallels asked me whether the VMs were moved or copied, and I answered that they were copied. The KB article makes it sound like that should have made Parallels assign new Hardware UUIDs to the VMs, but that didn't happen (it did assign new MAC addresses, though).
I'm going to try finding the Hardware UUID in the PVM using a hex search; if I can find it, maybe I can change it manually, using a hex editor. It seems like a very yucky procedure, though, for something you'd think Parallels should handle itself. Is there any better way of doing this? Is this a bug in Parallels 11, or did they deliberately remove the Hardware UUID reset functionality (and if so, why)?
I was able to change it by:
Shutting down the virtual machine
Find the virtual machine bundle located on disk in Finder, right click on it and "Show package contents" on the actual .pvm file.
Then find the config.pvs file inside and open it with a text editor.
Change an arbitrary digit in the <SourceVmUuid>
value
Start the virtual machine
You can then go to:
About this Mac -> System Report -> Hardware
and inspect that the Hardware UUID has changed.
I have two MacBook Pros, but they shipped with a case-insensitive file systems. I would like to test a few of my utilities on a case-sensitive file system. Is there anyway to turn case-sensitivity on per application? Perhaps there is another solution that does not require a re-format of the hard drive?
I also read Technical Note TN2096: Debugging Case-Sensitivity Bugs in Applications. But it does not detail how to set up a test environment.
There is no way to "turn on case-sensitivity" for a single application. The filesystem structure on your volume is what's case-sensitive or not.
You can use Disk Utility to set this up, in a couple of different ways:
If you're just testing reading and writing files: make a disk image, using the format "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)". Mount that disk image and make your app use it.
If you want to test on a system booted from a case-sensitive filesystem: add a partition to your drive, choose the case-sensitive format for the new partition, then install OS X on it. Or use an external disk.
I'm sure there are more tricky ways, but those should get you started.
I'm need to find a method to programmatically determine which disk drive Windows is using to boot. In other words, I need a way from Windows to determine which drive the BIOS is using to boot the whole system.
Does Windows expose an interface to discover this? With how big the Windows API is, I'm hoping there is something buried in there that might do the trick.
Terry
p.s. Just reading the first sectors of the hard disk isn't reveling anything. On my dev box I have two hard disks, and when I look at the contents of the first couple of sectors on either of the hard disks I have a standard boiler plate MBR.
Edit to clarify a few things.
The way I want to identify the device is with a string which will identify a physical disk drive (as opposed to a logical disk drive). Physical disk drives are of the form "\\.\PHYSICALDRIVEx" where x is a number. On the other hand, a logical drive is identified by a string of the form, "\\.\x" where x is a drive letter.
Edit to discuss a few of the ideas that were thrown out.
Knowing which logical volume Windows used to boot doesn't help me here. Here is the reason. Assume that C: is using a mirrored RAID setup. Now, that means we have at least two physical drives. Now, I get the mapping from Logical Drive to Physical Drive and I discover that there are two physical drives used by that volume. Which one did Windows use to boot? Of course, this is assuming that the physical drive Windows used to boot is the same physical drive that contains the MBR.
Go into Control Panel
System and Security
Administrative Tools
Launch the System Configuration tool
If you have multiple copies of Windows installed, the one you are booted with will be named such as:
Windows 7 (F:\Windows)
Windows 7 (C:\Windows) : Current OS, Default OS
Unless C: is not the drive that windows booted from.Parse the %SystemRoot% variable, it contains the location of the windows folder (i.e. c:\windows).
You can use WMI to figure this out. The Win32_BootConfiguration class will tell you both the logical drive and the physical device from which Windows boots. Specifically, the Caption property will tell you which device you're booting from.
For example, in powershell, just type gwmi Win32_BootConfiguration to get your answer.
That depends on your definition of which disk drive Windows used to boot. I can think of 3 different answers on a standard BIOS system (who knows what an EFI system does):
The drive that contains the active MBR
The active partition, with NTLDR (the system partition)
The partition with Windows on it (the boot partition)
2 and 3 should be easy to find - I'm not so sure about 1. Though you can raw disk read to find an MBR, that doesn't mean it's the BIOS boot device this time or even next time (you could have multiple disks with MBRs).
You really can't even be sure that the PC was started from a hard drive - it's perfectly possible to boot Windows from a floppy. In that case, both 1 and 2 would technically be a floppy disk, though 3 would remain C:\Windows.
You might need to be a bit more specific in your requirements or goals.
You type diskpart, list disk and check disks for boot.
Ex:
dispart
list disk
select disk 0
detail disk
The disk with Boot volume is disk with windows installed:
There is no boot.ini on a machine with just Vista installed.
How do you want to identify the drive/partition: by the windows drive letter it is mapped to (eg. c:\, d:) or by how its hardware signature (which bus, etc).
For the simple case check out GetSystemDirectory
Try HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\SystemPartition
You can try use simple command line. bcdedit is what you need, just run cmd as administrator and type bcdedit or bcdedit \v, this doesn't work on XP, but hope it is not an issue.
Anyway for XP you can take a look into boot.ini file.
a simpler way
search downloads in the start menu and click on downloads in the search results to see where it will take you the drive will be highlighted in the explorer.
On Windows 10.
Open "Computer Management"
Look for "Storage" in list "left top side of page"
select "Disk Management"
On section of page showing the list of disks and the partitions find the disk that has the partition assigned as drive C:
On that disk containing C: partition
Use the right mouse button to select the Square section containing The Disk Number, Type of drive and size in GB . When menu opens select the Properties.
A window will open showing what drive hardware was used.