The core program can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. It does not ship with any of the antivirus rescue disks or system tools though. It is up to the user to download them individually with the possibility to skip programs by simply not downloading them.

The program itself is divided into four tabs that list the various tools that are supported by the antivirus rescue disk. The Italian interface can be switched to several other languages. A click on any entry will open a website with download possibilities. Some websites are also shown in the Italian language but it is usually not a big problem to change those to another language like English or German to download the tool in the right language.

The downloaded images and tools have to be placed in the right directory so that the program will recognize them during the creation of the bootable disk image. Here is the list of supported antivirus rescue CDs and other tools:

antivirus: Avira Antivir Rescue System, Bitdefender, Dr. Web Live CD, F-Secure, GData, Kaspersky Kav Rescue CD, Panda Safe CD and VBA Rescue

utility: Floppy win98SE, Clonezilla, Gparted, NT password, Parted Magic, System Rescue CD, Ultimate Boot CD

Linux: Austrumi, Damn Small Linux, NimbleX, Puppy Linux, Slax

PE: LiveXP, MegalabCD, WindowsPE, UBCD4Win, VistaPE

The program offers then to create either an ISO image which can be burned to CD and DVD or to make to copy the files to an USB device and make that device bootable.

Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk Utility is slightly more complex to setup initially. The tools that are combined on the disk or USB device on the other hand might make it an interesting option for users who usually run multiple antivirus programs and utilities in situations where they are needed.

The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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The approach has a few advantages but also a disadvantage. The advantage is obviously that you can use it to remove known viruses, trojans, worms and other malicious software even if the computer cannot be booted into the operating system anymore. And since it is a standalone client it is not dependent on an installed anti-virus client but can be used on any computer that can be booted from CD. This also means that the program is independent from the installed operating system.

The disadvantage of the approach is that the virus definitions cannot be updated that easily and that it normally means that the full boot disk would have to be downloaded and burned to CD again meaning that this would have to be done regularly to stay up to date.

The good news is that you can download the Kaspersky Rescue Disk freely from an Kaspersky FTP and burn it to CD or DVD using a CD burning software like Nero.

The computer has to boot from the media and the boot sequence can be set in the computer BIOS. Make sure that the computer checks the DVD drive for a bootable device before it pulls the data from the hard drives.

The interface of the Rescue Disk is straightforward. It basically allows you to scan the computer for malicious software and offers ways to remove any that are found. This does not give a guarantee that the computer can be booted again after the cleanup though. A damaged file normally does not get repaired by anti-virus software.

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I know that a lot of users reinstall Windows if they have forgotten their password because they cannot figure out how to get into the system again. I’m using the Trinity Rescue Kit to reset the Windows password. You actually have the choice between setting it to a blank password or changing it to a new one.

It can be run from a bootable CD, USB device or network over PXE. The bootable CD is my choice and I always keep one around in case of emergency. Just boot from the CD if you cannot login into Windows anymore because it asks for a password that you cannot remember.

You can start once the message “Welcome to Trinity..” appears on the screen. Use the command winpass -l to list all usernames of the system. Now enter winpass -u (for instance winpass -u Martin). This will lead to a series of dialogs, make sure to press n when asked if you want to deactivate Syskey.

You are given a choice to (1) remove the password, (2) set a new password or (3) make the selected user an administrator of the system.

That’s actually just one tool that the Trinity Rescue Disk offers. I could write about other useful ones if you like. Oh, one last remark. The file system is based on Linux which means that you will not see the usual c,d,e drives like you do in Windows. Hda, hdb, hdc are the hard drives connected to your computer and the numbers behind are the partitions of those hard drives. Hda1 for instance means the first partition of the first hard drive which is usually the location of the Windows installation while hdc2 would refer to the second partition of the third hard drive.

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Start pebuilder.exe which is located in the BartPe folder. Select No at the beginning and put your Windows XP disc in the drive. Now browse to the drive in Source and pick the drive letter of the CD. Click on Build afterwards and Yes to create the new directory. Bart PE processes the files on the disk now and should end the process without Warnings.

Please note that this is only working if you have Windows XP with Service Pack 2 on the disk. If you have an old CD you need to download the Service Pack 2 from Microsoft so that it can be integrated. Click on Source > Slipstream in Bart PE afterwards, check Source is read only and add the downloaded Service Pack 2 under Servicepack. Click on OK afterwards. Below is a screenshot of that process.

Move the folder srsp1 into the newly created BartPE directory (the directory where all the files from the Windows XP Cd have been copied into, not the root folder with pebuilder.exe).

Adding additional applications:

The default USB Rescue Stick contains several useful applications such as Check Disk and a File Manager. It is possible to add additional applications, called plugins, to the Rescue Stick. I would suggest to at least include a CD Burning Program and some applications that scan the computer for Trojans and Malicious software.

The plugins listing at the official website lists a lot of plugins, I would like to explain how plugins are added and leave it up to you which you add to your Rescue Stick.

If you click on the Plugins button you notice the enabled tab which either says YES or NO. No means the plugin is not installed yet. I will use the Irfanview example to explain how to add plugins that have not been enabled yet. Those require additional files most of the time.

Mark the IrfanView row and click on help. A website should pop up explaining what to do. In this case two files from the IrfanView software that can be downloaded from the IrfanView developers have to be added to the BartPE plugins directory.

A great plugin package can be downloaded from the WinBoard, it adds plugins for Firefox, 7-Zip, Acrobat Reader, several routers, Putty and Raid drivers (which I had to deactivate because they created an error during installation).

Creating the bootable USB Stick:

Open the command window again and use the following command from within the root BartPe folder to copy the files to the USB stick. (g: is the drive letter that could be different on your computer.)

pe2usb -f g:

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The first part of this article explains what you need to create an USB Rescue Stick both hardware and software wise. All required download links are given in this part so that you can start the downloads right away. The second part will describe how the rescue stick can be created and configured.

You do need an USB stick that has at least 256 Megabytes of space and a motherboard that supports booting from USB sticks. Consult the manual of your motherboard to see if this is possible or try it out by connecting an USB stick to your computer and opening the bios configuration.

Preparing the System:

You do need a software called Bart PE which will be used to create the bootable USB Rescue Stick, two files from the Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 download and the Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD.

Download Bart PE and install or unpack it. We need to unpack the Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1, this is done using the following command in the command line. (Start > Run > cmd > Enter)

Change to the directory of the executable and enter the following phrase:

>WindowsServer2003-KB889101-SP1-x86-ENU.exe /x

This asks for a directory to unpack the executable to, just enter one and hit enter. Hint: You do not have to enter the full file name, just start typing and hit tab after WindowsServer and Windows should fill out the rest of the filename automatically so taht you only need to add /x at the end.

Now create a new directory, name it srsp1 for example and move the following two files into that directory: ramdisk.sy_ and setupldr.bin which are both located in the i386 folder after unpacking the Service Pack 1. The rest of the folders and files of the service pack can be deleted afterwards.

We have to expand the file ramdisk.sy_ afterwards. This is also done from the command line. Change the directory to the SP1 folder and enter the following command:

expand ramdisk.sy_ ramdisk.sys

Now delete the old ramdisk.sy_ file in the directory. We have finished all preparations and the article will continue in part 2.

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