BartPE

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BartPE (Bart's Preinstalled Environment) is a Live CD/ Live USB version of the Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 32bit operating systems.

BartPE allows a user to boot Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 from a CD-ROM, DVD or a flash disk, regardless of the condition of the installed operating systems on the internal hard drive. This means that the user can, for instance, recover data from an operating system installation that has failed due to either a software or physical hardware corruption.

It can also be used to scan for and remove rootkits, viruses and spyware (that have infected boot files) and reset a lost administrator password.

A user can create his or her own installation of BartPE using the installation disk of the operating system in question and the program PE Builder, programmed by Bart Lagerweij.

1 BartPE vs. Windows Preinstallation Environment
2 Description
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] BartPE vs. Windows Preinstallation Environment

BartPE is similar to Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) but they differ in several aspects:

WinPE is an official Microsoft product. BartPE is not endorsed or supported by Microsoft, which has discouraged wide spread acceptance in the corporate environment.
The tools needed to make a BartPE installation (PE Builder) are freeware. WinPE 1.x was initially available only to Microsoft OEM partners and Microsoft Software Assurance customers. However, with the release of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK), WinPE 2.0 is now available as an included component at no charge.
BartPE offers a wealth of user-provided custom plugins. Since WinPE 1.x was initially difficult to obtain due the strict licensing options, it does not have the same wide availability of plugins.
BartPE uses an XML based 'Start Menu' called nu2menu which calls up basic functions. Windows PE relies on console commands within a GUI-less, command-line environment (although the latter is also able to run GUI-based applications).

[edit] Description

As with Windows PE, BartPE operates by creating a RAM disk in the system memory. A limited version of Windows is then installed in the RAM disk. Thus, both operating systems require no hard drive or network access. This also allows them to be run from non-writable media such as a CD-ROM.

Since each instance of BartPE is a new installation, the BartPE "boot" disk needs original Windows setup files in order to operate. The Bart PE Builder application interprets and condenses files from a Windows setup CD to create the BartPE installation. Consequently, the end user must have an original Windows installation CD-ROM available for use before BartPE can be utilized.

Additional applications can be included in the BartPE setup through the use of "plugins". A plugin contains setup information for a specific application, so that it can be included on the media and installed along with Windows at each BartPE boot. Currently there are a few hundred plugins available in addition to the dozen-odd that are included by default with BartPE. Since BartPE represents a totally independent operating environment, the most obvious application examples involve backup, restoration, diagnosis and error-correction of systems with malfunctioning primary storage drives. Plugin programs can nominally be added to the capacity of the BartPE media.

BartPE is known to have certain incompatibilities with the Windows XP CDs shipped with most Dell PCs. The Dell versions include changes to the Windows setup files that can cause the BartPE build process to fail. Two patches are currently available to correct the known problems.