WindSLIC thumb drive edition

I've been reading the thread with interest and it occured to me that you could create a thumb drive as you guys have described and the permanently attach it to one of the mobo's internal usb connectors.

To ensure you dont accidentally overwrite the thumb drive you could use a utility such as "NoDrives Manager" to hide it in windows and just leave it permantly connected inside the case. It wont work for a laptop but it would for anything else.

Mike

 

Just another thought, Win 7 by default installs a hidden boot partition on the windows drive.

Is it possible to create another hidden partition before Win 7 boot partition and only install slic information in that partition, so as the computer boots it reads the slic file before the unmodified boot win 7 boot files ?

Or if you have multiple hard drives create a small partition containing the slic file ,set that drive as the first boot drive and the drive with the boot files and Win 7 installation as the second drive.

As you can see i'm only a noob and novice, but from what I've read from the different threads and posts this hasn't been considered.

Mike

 

It's more that it was (almost) done in the earlier days. Some of the early loaders used a modified Grub4DOS to basically that operation, though I suppose technically they were on the same partition. There's nothing preventing it from working that way. In most of the WindSLIC situations (except for the boot sector version) WindSLIC performs its operations then calls Int18H to (hopefully) pass control back to the BIOS, which then dials the next higher boot device. That's great for people with multiple boot devices, but most BIOSes don't have the concept of per-partition booting, so when a device gives the BIOS back control via Int 18H, the BIOS won't try that device again and will give up entirely if there isn't another device to try.

It's very possible to make a partition such as you describe if you want to do it. I would start by getting Grub4DOS (regular, not the SLIC-adding version), then get the WindSLIC volume boot sector stuff, and tweak it to call grub instead of the windows loader. Then, set up a grub grub.conf/menu.lst (depending on what version you're using) that loads back to your actual Win7 partition. It's a tad skanky and a bit of work, but it would work fine. Perhaps nononsence will find the idea interesting enough to package it up so that it works without so many steps.

As for me, I'm saving up for a Core i7 board so I can work out the BIOS-de-protection needed for it.

Have fun!
-tij-

 

Indeed. There are some really tiny USB drives out there if you can track one down.

If you really wanted to prevent overwrite entirely, you could use the WindSLIC ISO version and use the sourceforge-hosted "u3-tool" to write the ISO to a U3-compatible USB flash device. Then, it would appear to the system that you were booting from a USB-CDROM, but you'd actually be booting from a USB flash device. You wouldn't need a utility to prevent writing to it since only the u3-tool can actually write to it. You could tweak the WindSLIC ISO to have useful stuff on it in addition to the WindSLIC stuff (which is just basically the boot sector, I ... think).

I've considered this idea many times for personal use (minus the WindSLIC part). It would act as an always-bootable safety setup for your PC, and if you leave room on the U3 device, you could put partitioning tools (PartedMagic is pretty good and free) on it and give yourself a boot-menu to allow you to boot to it if you needed to.

Lots of fun opportunities there,
-tij-

 

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As long it is formatted as NTFS then you can, as far as i know this won't work on fat32 (yet)

 

I never use those memory slots anyhow and I've got a 512MB around so would be a good idea for some

 

Tried with memory card and failed twice so I think it's a no go for setting the BIOS to boot from card...lol

Still will try with real USB and report back

Edit: I grabbed a hp slic and renamed it slic.bin and put it in the main folder then I right clicked the Make_WindSLIC .cmd file and then ansered the questions as to what drive my USB was. Then I entered HP key and cert then restarted set BIOS boot order to USB and restarted and it was activated...lol

Tested on V3000

Awesome

Now I just need one of those super small USB's

 

Could not make it boot from a CF card as well, USB like timesurfer mentioned works without issues

 

activated Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard using hp slic and dell key with hp cert.

 

Trying this on an old Abit AN8 32X mobo and when booting through the flash stick I get the normal BIOS message about no boot devices found. Any suggestions, or am I missing something?

 

Curious I forgot what slic I grabbed for my compaq cause there are 5 for HP

Anyone can tell me which one to pick for whatever comp I'm on?

Thanks

 

What are they all for?

MD told me one to use back then but I forgot

Thanks

 

Thanks adviser I think that was probably the one MD told me

Now I will test and report back

 

Couldn't figure it out this time but worked once for me before