bobbyblue's blog

How to download music for free without P2P software

2009-10-05T09:03:00.001-07:00

If you want to download songs of your favorite bands, but don’t understand how all peer-to-peer software works or you are worried about facing legal consequences by downloading from P2P networks, then you might want to use a program called Clickster.

Clickster uses Google and other search engines

to find MP3’s, which have indexed more MP3’s than the P2P networks, so that means you can find just about every song and not have to worry about illegal downloads. The music industry does not seem to care (or does not know) that Google has more MP3’s indexed than all the P2P networks combined.

Clickster is a freeware program and is really easy to use. Once you have it installed, it loads up with a simple interface where you type in the name of the song or artist and the search begins! You can download the files directly or you can play them through the interface by double clicking on the song name.

Pretty sweet! No need to worry about downloading bloated P2P software that might have spyware if you just want to listen to a little music while working on your computer!

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/22/search-for-and-download-mp3-with-clickster/

How to find the name or title of a song by lyrics

2009-10-05T09:01:00.001-07:00

Most people listen to songs from bands they like and sometimes search for the lyrics of a song if they can’t quite make out what’s being sung. However, for those of us who happen to listen to the lyrics of a song and want to find out who sang it, there are some useful lyric search engines

that do just that. Frankly, this happen to me all the time!

It’s amazing how many times I’ve jumped into my car and turned on the radio, really liked the song that was playing, but at the end of the song there was no announcement by the DJ of the artist or band! I understand the whole “back-to-back” song broadcasts on radios these days, but it would be really nice if there was a quick mention of the song name at the very end!

Anyway, so if you know some of the lyrics for the song you’re looking for, you can try out a few of these lyric search engines to try and find the band or song name. Actually, there are quite a few of them out there, but only a few really have large databases of song lyrics. So I put a couple to the test to try and find a fairly new song by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers called Californication with the query “the sun may rise in the east”.

These are the search engines that actually found the song:

1. Get Lyrical – You can also search by Artist, by Song, or by Album.

2. Search Lyrics – This site also has some non-English lyrics and you can translate any of the English lyrics to another language on the lyric pages. Get Lyrical finds an exact match for your lyrics whereas Search Lyrics searches for those words anywhere in a particular song and will return a result even if the words are all not together.

3. LyricsFly – Found my song also, but make sure you click on Lyrics first and then perform a search.

How to add Delicious bookmarks to Facebook?

2009-09-28T08:18:00.001-07:00

Do you want to share your Delicious bookmarks with your Friends?

Login to your Delicious account.
Go to Settings
Choose Facebook Application

Delicious Settings

Now you will be redirected to Facebook where you will be asked permissions.
If you want to add Delicious to Facebook, click allow

Delicious in Facebook

Once you allow permissions, set the required permissions

Delicious Settings in Facebook

UPDATE:Shutdown ur pc using cellphone

2009-09-28T04:53:00.001-07:00

Shortcut Key To Flip The Screen In the Windows TO 180 Degree..

2009-09-28T04:17:00.001-07:00

The shortcut is

for normal windows : Ctrl + Alt + <Up arrow>
and for 180 deg it is : Ctrl + Alt + <Down arrow>

How ever you should know that these are default shortcuts for Intel Extreme Graphics Controller, and you can change them. To check / change or disable these keys go to control panel–>Intel Extreme Graphics–>Hot Keys.

How To Query Google.com Instead Of Local Google Search Engine

2009-09-28T04:10:00.001-07:00

If you are a serious Googler, then you will know the fact that indexed data for the same search terms will vary depending on the Google server that’s queried.

If you are searching for a particular thing in India, the query is automatically directed to Google.co.in servers and the data indexed in Google.co.in will be different from the data that’ll be indexed in Google.com . The results returned from Google.co.in will be localized and hence the difference.

All your queries, by default will go to your local Search center and if in case you want to query to base Search Center then use this link.

Shutdown ur pc using cellphone

2009-09-28T00:58:00.001-07:00

Prerequisites :
1> Should have a PC / Laptop / Desktop with internet connection
2> An account in twitter (you can get one from here : http://twitter.com/),
3> A cell phone / mobile phone that supports internet via GPRS .

Here’s how you can possiby try and succeed to shutdown, restart or logoff your windows system from a cell phone / mobile phone:

1> Set up your cell phone to send and receive messages from twitter. Follow these steps.

2> Install TweetMyPC and learn how to run TweetMyPC.

Use both the features to shut down your PC / Laptop from your cell phone !

Check if windows is activated or not…

2009-09-28T00:56:00.001-07:00

Heres a simple way to check if you're version of Windows has been activated.
XP:
Start->Run
Type:
oobe/msoobe /a
then press enter.
Vista:
Start Orb->Right Click Computer->Properties
Scroll down to "Windows Activation"
It will show Product ID and if you're activated.

Bypass 140 Character Limit in Twitter

2009-09-27T23:51:00.001-07:00

Twitter is an awesome tool which increases your site reader but one thing which I don’t like about Twitter is that it has a 140 characters limit. So using this loop-hole of Twitter another site called PageTweet , will help you out to bypass 140 character limit. What it actually does is make you enter your message along with your url and nickname and then gives you a short url for that message. You can actually add the shortened url in your Twitter feed along with some another message.

How is this different from other url shortening services?
After reading the above lines, this would be the first question that generates in your mind. The url shortening services may help you to shorten your url but the url which this site will provides will make your viewers to your targeted site, which now has a PageTweet bar along the top that displays the message that you have typed in PageTweet site. It also shows a mini hit-counter for your shortened URL. Below is the example how this happens.

Convert an Ebook to Audio Book

2009-09-27T23:48:00.001-07:00

Now in this Electronic going world, people are shifting towards E-books and Audio books, as they are portable and available Free on site such as Project Gutenberg. Recently , I was reading some E-book and found that it will effect my I eyes, as I was watching it on my PC. So, I thought of a way to convert an E-book to Audio book and Googled it out.
I found that a small utility "TextAloud" from NextUp will do my work, it is used to convert an eBook to an Audio Book and that can be put into mobile or a player and listened any where, the most portable way..

Get Windows 7 in you Windows XP

2009-09-27T23:46:00.001-07:00

After monotony of default Windows XP/ Windows Theme, it is the time to change yourself and try something new. After windows 7 beta has been released, its time to try the latest Windows Looks and Feels. So just grab the latest Windows 7 Theme (Transformation Pack) which will give a fresh look to your computer.

Seven Remix is a completely free transformation pack which lets you enjoy the look and feel of windows 7 very easily. Seven Remix transformation pack is designed by niwradsoft
Seven Remix transformation pack is made to work on following versions of windows vista, Windows Vista (all editions, SP1), Windows 2008 (all editions, SP1), All Language Versions
Note: This transformation pack is not supported on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP.
Link:- Download Seven Remix Transformation Pack For Windows Vista

React OS – Alternative to Windows

2009-09-27T23:41:00.001-07:00

I am using windows operating system for last decade and also sometime install Linux based distributions for testing purposes, this time I’ve found something really amazing to test operating system on my PC, and this amazing thing is React OS. It is Windows NT based open-source operating system, which supports Windows binary (exe) to run in it.

React OS is still under heavy development and is in alpha stage of development. The developers itself recommend not to use for daily purposes, till some more improvements are made; but if you are a computer geek and love to try out different OS, then you may give it a try. You can download React OS by various means-

Download React OS as Installation CD, Live CD
You can also run it virtualized using VMware virtual machine or QMenu
You can also get the source code of React OS

You can get to downloads page of React OS at here.

offline browser-HT Track

2009-09-27T21:18:00.001-07:00

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

WinHTTrack is the Windows 9x/XP/Vista release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release. See thedownload page.

Automatic lyrics display for your favorite track!

2009-09-27T21:10:00.001-07:00

MiniLyrics is a fascinating lyrics viewer for synchronizing and displaying lyrics of the currently playing song in Winamp 2.0/3.0, Winamp 5.x, Windows Media Player, itunes, matchbox, Quintessenial Player, foobar2000. RealOne Minilyrics makes your music come alive with streaming lyrics that are timed with the song.

You can follow along with the artist and catch every word,and even sing along like a Karaoke machine. Minilyrics is an application that helps you to view lyrics of your favorite songs. Minilyrics is fully compatible with all major music players, like Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc. As the easiest-to-use Lyrics viewer software, Minilyrics only needs a few steps to install and take you less than 5 mins to have a full version ready for use. Whenever you launch the any of the media players, the software will automatically get started. Minilyrics lets you select your favorite skins, fonts, colors and minimize the viewer window to whatever size that you feel comfortable with. The karaoke mode brings you tremendous joy in learning a song by moving the lyrics word by word.

Some key features:
- Automatic lyrics display for your favorite songs
- Never expired trial version
- Cool skins
- Wild compatibility for 13 players

MiniLyrics supports:
· Winamp
· Windows Media Player
· Foobar2000
· Apple iTunes
· RealPlayer
· Quintessential Player
· Musicmatch Jukebox
· MediaMonkey
· The KMPlayer
· JetAudio
· Yahoo! Music Engine
· J. River Media Center
· J. River Media Jukebox
· XMPlay
· BSPlayer

MiniLyrics 6.6.320
New: Support VLC media Player 1.0.
New: New local hotkey settings.
Improved: Optimized the lyrics display CPU cost.
Improved: Lyrics editor.
Fixed: Lyrics displaying fade out bug.

Skins：http://www.crintsoft.com/mlskin.htm
Changes：http://www.crintsoft.com/mlwhatsnew.htm；http://www.minilyrics.com/msg.htm
Home：http://www.crintsoft.com/；http://www.minilyrics.com/

Official Download：
http://www.crintsoft.com/download/MiniLyrics.exe

Prevent Cut – Copy – Paste – Delete – Renaming of Files and Folders

2009-09-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

If you don’t want others to use your computer, copy data and modify your files and folders, Try Prevent. It is a freeware app which prevents others from copying anything from your computer along with blocking access to cut, copy, paste, rename or delete files and folders.

You can download and install Prevent. You can use your own keyboard shortcuts to stop the application. If you want to activate Prevent, Just start the application and it prevents any unauthorized modifications. You can stop this application to get all the functions to work normally.

Here is the list of functions Prevent can be used for,

Stops Cut
Stops Paste
Stops Copy
Stops Delete
Stops Copy To
Stops Move to
Stops Send To
Prevents renaming
Disables Task Manager’s End Process button.
It even prevents you to right click on process name and click on end process. It also grays out the context menu items, disable Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V and/or stops the process.

Get this handy application from this link.

Flash Cookies? What are Flash Cookies?

2009-09-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

Flash cookies are a new way of tracing your movement and storing a lot more information about you than with normal cookies. One major disadvantage of flash cookies is that you can’t locate them in your browser. They are not shown in the list of cookies that you can see when you take a look at the cookies that are currently saved in your web browser. Normal HTTP cookies can’t save more than 4 Kilobyte of data while Flash cookies can save up to 100 Kilobyte. If you want to try out how they work you could do the following.

Go to Youtube, increase or decrease the volume of the videos and delete all cookies afterwards. You will notice that the volume level is still at the same level when you close your browser and open it again. This is done with so called Local Shared Objects, better known as Flash cookies. The main question is of course how a computer can be checked for Flash cookies and how it would be possible to delete those cookies again.

Turns out that web site operators can use Flash applets embedded on their site to write information into a preference file stored on the computer that visits the site. One thing this preference file can be used for is recreating a browser cookie that may have been deleted, or to store other tracking information. The idea of using Flash as a means of hiding a tracking cookie on a machine bothers me because it is insidious. There are clear interfaces built into web browsers for managing regular cookies, and users can delete or reject them as they choose. Flash Cookies are hidden in user libraries and preference files, and to manage them you have to burrow into Adobe’s support site to find the applet that will manage the privacy settings for the Flash Player installed on your computer. Did you catch that? To manage the privacy settings of a program installed on your computer, you have to go to an external web site. That bothers me on a fundamental level. I should be able manage the software on my computer using tools on my computer, without having to go to a vendor’s web site.

Because Flash Cookies use preferences written elsewhere on the computer, they aren’t tied to a single browser. I visited the Adobe page containing my Flash privacy settings with 2 different browsers and saw the same list of sites that are storing information on my machine. So, in that way, Flash Cookies are even better than regular browser cookies for advertising use, because they can affect every browser you have installed. A Flash Cookie could identify you to an advertiser, even if you’ve never visited the site with this specific browser before!

go to settings manager
to change settings

HOW TO MAKE GREAT PASSWORDS

2009-09-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Think of a memorable, eight or nine-word sentence like “Fred is a bad ninja but has 3 nunchucks”.
Take the first word of every sentence to turn it into a password. Result: “Fiabnbh3n”
Test your password using Microsoft Password Checker

That’s it. You’re done! You’ll find that this method results in remarkably easy to remember and strong passwords.

Prevent keyloggers from grabbing your passwords(VESIK METHOD)

2009-09-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

Vesik method revised

Suppose your password is Jk5pGHmY9
Type three random characters into the password field (say, Wv5)
With your mouse, highlight those random characters and type three more random characters right over them (say, aUJ). Repeat this step a few times (the more you repeat, the harder it is for someone looking at a log of your keystrokes to figure out your true password)
Highlight the last portion of gibberish you typed and input a segment of your true password (say, pGH)
Place your cursor to the left or right of the correct portion of your password and repeat steps 2 to 4
Once your whole password is contained within the password field, click the “Submit” or “Log in” button

This is effective because a keylogger would register something similar to the following set of keystrokes:

click Wv5 click d3i click M%f click pGH click Opl click 37s click Jk5 click rF9 click 1N8 click mY9 click

Your true password is contained in those keystrokes, but neither a computer program nor a human looking at them would know which strokes are legitimate and which aren’t. Most thieves would move on to an easier target if they ran into a mess like this one. However, if the thief was persistent, he could probably find your true password by trial and error. But his chances for each attempt are low, at around 1 in 10 million.

Google unveils the Plus Box

2009-09-04T07:16:00.001-07:00

Google just released a new feature called the Plus Box, which will allow you to see more information about individual search results. When you click the “plus” box, you’ll get rich set of extra data right below the search result itself. Here’s what the new plus symbol will look like:

Currently, the new feature is only supporting stock information and maps . If you search for a company listed on the NYSE or if it’s web site comes up in search results, you’ll be able to click the plus box and get information on the current stock price, chart, and company information.

MS Office 2010 beta 1 leaked

2009-09-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

It’s probably the hottest news.MS Office 2010 beta has been leaked by wzor and is available for download in both x86 and x64 flavours..The file name is MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64.ENGLISH-WZT and the size of 32 bit is 761 MB and for the 64 bit,the size is 852 MB

The leaked build is MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64 which has many differences from the build 14.0.4006.1010 primarily a new purple shaded color scheme.

The build is available on various torrent trackers and I’m in the process of downloading it right now. I’ll post more details as soon as I test drive it.

screenshots :

DOWNLOAD LINK : MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64.ENGLISH-WZT

Fedel - I Live (2008)

2009-09-04T03:02:00.000-07:00

Artist: Fedel
Album: I Live
Release Date: 2008
Quality: VAR kbr

Track Listing:

01.Intro
02.Tell A Friend
03.Walk it like I'm Changed
04.Get Live
05.Keep On feat Sarah Sanders
06.Proverb
07.In the Church
08.Old Things
09.One by One feat Sean Johnson
10.Out the Crib
11.Get it feat Knin and Viktory
12.On Mine
13.I LIVE feat Cam
14. Time and a Season
15.Get Down feat Dre Murray

DOWNLOAD

Kutless - What Faith Can Do [Single] (2009)

2009-09-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

Artist: Kutless

Album: What Faith Can Do
Release Date: September, 2009
Quality: VBR @ 112 Kbps

DOWNLOAD

Avalon - Reborn [Unofficial EP] (2009)

2009-09-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Artist: Avalon
Album: Reborn
Release Date: September 15'th, 2009
Credit To: Pamjrp
Quality: 192 Kbps

Seems Avalon is in a big change not only of members but the style too. Check this out.

Track Listing:
1. Reborn
2. Alive
3. Arise

DOWNLOAD

Abel - The Honest Love (2009)EP

2009-09-04T02:53:00.000-07:00

Artist: Abel
Album: The Honest Love (EP)
Release Date: 2009
Quality: 240Kbps

Track Listing:
01. Dressed Like a King (3:48)
02. Song of Simon (4:44)
03. The Honest Love (4:17)
04. My Melody (4:46)
05. The World Sings (6:08

DOWNLOAD

Booting Windows XP with USB Flash Drive

2009-01-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

Almost everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time at all has run into at least one situation in which a problem left a PC unbootable. What if you could return the machine to a bootable state just by inserting a USB flash drive though? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to install a bootable copy of Windows XP onto a flash drive and then boot a PC off of the flash drive. From there, you can use applications that you have installed on the flash drive (anti virus, anti spyware, disk repair, etc.) to fix the PC’s problem. In this article, I will show you how.

What’s the catch?

As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.

Another catch is that not every flash drive will get the job done. The primary factors that limit your use of a particular flash drive are capacity and speed. Technically, speed isn’t really a limiting factor, but booting Windows will be painfully slow unless you use a flash drive that supports USB 2.0.

The flash drive’s capacity is actually a limiting factor though. Surprisingly though, there are size limits on both the upper and lower end. Your flash drive can’t be too large or too small. There isn’t really a documented minimal size for a flash drive. You just need something large enough to hold Windows XP and a few applications. As you probably know, Windows XP normally consumes over a gigabyte of disk space. Later I will show you how to use a free utility to trim the excess fat off of Windows XP and make it a whole lot smaller. Even so, I still recommend that your flash drive be at least a minimum of 256 MB in size.

As I mentioned, there is a maximum size for the USB flash drive that you can use. Currently, USB flash drives exist in sizes of up to 4 GB, and 8 GB flash drives are expected to be available by the end of the year. As nice as it would be to have 8 GB to play with, the flash drive that you use for this project can be no larger than 2 GB. The reason for this is because you will have to format the flash drive using the FAT-16 file system, which has a 2 GB limit. Presently, you are stuck using FAT-16 because most computers will not recognize a flash drive as being bootable if the drive is formatted with anything other than FAT-16.

Preparing your Windows installation CD

One of the requirements for creating our bootable USB flash drive is a Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD. If your Windows XP installation CD doesn’t already include Service Pack 2, then you will have to make a CD that includes Service Pack 2 through a technique called slipstreaming.

Other requirements

In addition to your Windows XP installation CD, there are a couple of other things that you are going to need. For starters, you will need the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can download this tool for free.

Another utility that you are going to need is Bart’s Preinstalled Environment Bootable Live Windows CD / DVD, or BartPE for short. You can download this utility for free from the BartPE Web site.

In addition to the software requirements, you must verify that the PC that you will be using to create the Windows deployment has 1.5 GB of free hard disk space (minimum) and supports booting from a USB device. I also strongly recommend that the PC be running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Prior to Service Pack 2, Windows XP sometimes had trouble interacting with USB storage devices.

Formatting the flash drive

Now that you have all of the prerequisites taken care of, it’s time to actually start setting up our flash drive. The first step in doing so, as strange as it sounds, is to format the flash drive. Windows will actually let you format a flash drive in the same way that you format a floppy disk. However, formatting a flash drive in this way will not work for this project. Furthermore, using Windows to format a flash drive directly has been known to destroy some types of flash drives.

Instead, you must format the flash drive by using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that you downloaded earlier. To do so, simply open the utility, select the device followed by the FAT file system option and click Start.

Once the device has been formatted, you must make it bootable. To do so, you must copy the BOOT.INI, NTLDR, and NTDETECT from the root directory of your PC’s boot drive to the flash drive. These files are hidden by default, so you will either have to configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files (including protected operating system files) or you will have to open a Command Prompt window and use the COPY command to copy the files.

If you choose to use the Windows Explorer method, then open Internet Explorer and enter C: into the address bar so that you are looking at your local hard drive. Next, select the Folder Options command from the Tools menu. When the Folder Options properties sheet opens, select the View tab. Now, just select the Show Hidden Files and Folders and deselect the Hide Extensions for Known File Types and the Hide Protected Operating System Files check boxes. Click OK to continue.

Booting from the USB flash drive

Now that you have formatted your USB flash drive and installed the boot files onto it, the next thing that you must do is to configure your PC to allow you to boot from the flash drive. This is all done through the computer’s BIOS Setup. I can’t give you specific instructions for this part, because every computer is different. I can give you a few pointers though.

You can access your computer’s BIOS by pressing a specific key immediately after you turn the PC on. The key varies, but it is usually either [F1], [F2], or [Delete]. Once you are in the BIOS Setup, you should verify that all of your computer’s USB options are enabled. This might include things like support for legacy USB devices or support for USB 2.0. If there is a time out setting for USB devices, you should set it to the max to insure that the system doesn’t time out while waiting on the USB device to boot.

Next, find the section on boot device priority. Normally, a USB flash drive (which is usually listed as USB-HDD, but may be listed as a removable device) will have a very low boot priority. If the USB flash drive’s boot priority is lower than the hard disk (listed as HDD) then the only time the computer would ever boot off of the USB flash drive is if the system were to fail to boot from the hard disk. You must therefore rearrange the boot device priority so that the flash drive has a higher priority than the hard drive.

Configuring Windows

Now that we have finally made it through all of the prep work, it’s time to start setting up Windows. As you have probably already guessed, the process of installing Windows to a flash drive is quite a bit different from your normal, run of the mill installation. There are a couple of reasons for this.

For starters, a full blown Windows XP deployment takes up over a Gigabyte of hard disk space. When you are installing to a flash drive, disk space is a scarce commodity. Even if you have over a Gigabyte of space on your flash drive, you probably don’t want to use it all on Windows. It would be nice to have room to install a few applications. Therefore, you need to trim the excess fat off of Windows.

The other reason why the installation process is so different from the usual Windows installation is because Windows Setup is not designed to install Windows to a flash drive. You therefore have to configure Windows using an alternate method.

The PEBuilder utility that you downloaded earlier can take care of both of these issues. PEBuilder is designed to create a build of Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) that does not take up as much space as a full blown installation. Once you create this new build, you can copy it to the flash drive. For right now, I will show you how to create a basic Windows build and copy it to the memory stick. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to install applications once Windows is up and running. Therefore, after I show you how to create a basic Windows build, I will show you how to create a build that includes some applications.

Begin the process by opening PEBuilder. When you open PEBuilder, you will see a screen similar to the one that’s shown in Figure A. Simply enter the path to the Windows installation files (the ones from your Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD). Next, verify that the Create ISO Image and the Burn to CD check boxes are not selected and then click the Build button. PEBuilder will now create the new Windows build.

Figure A

You must use PEBuilder to create a Windows build that will work with a flash drive.

Now, it’s time to copy Windows to the flash drive. To do so, you will have to use a special batch file that’s included with PEBuilder. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to c:\pebuilder313\plugin\peinst. Now, insert an empty flash drive into the computer’s USB port and then execute the file PEINST.CMD. You will now see a menu appear as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

PEBuilder uses a batch file to install Windows onto a flash drive.

Type 1 and press [Enter] and you will be prompted to enter the path to the build that you have created. Enter C:\pebuilder313\BartPE. Now, type 2, press [Enter], and you will be prompted for the target path. Enter the drive letter that Windows has assigned to your USB flash drive. After doing so, the menu is updated as shown in Figure C. The menu now displays the source path and the destination drive. Type 5 and press [Enter] to install Windows to the flash drive.

Figure C

Use menu option 5 to install Windows to the flash drive.

Installing applications

Now that I have shown you how to create and install a basic Windows build, I want to talk for a moment about how you can add an application to the build (prior to creating it). The PEBuilder program comes pre-configured to support a number of common Windows applications, but does not come with the applications themselves.

The reason why installing applications can be a little bit tricky is because most Windows applications modify the Windows registry. The build that you are creating is basically a collection of installation files, and the build itself does not contain a registry (the registry gets created when Windows is installed onto the flash drive). As such, PEBuilder uses a sort of registry emulator.

If you go to the C:\PEBUILDER313\PLUGIN folder, you will see sub folders for a number of different applications. If you open one of these application folders, you will see that the folder contains an INF file and a FILES folder. The INF file contains all of the information that would normally go into the registry, and the FILES folder stores all of the program’s files.

To see how this works, let’s install an application that I’m sure most of you are familiar with; Nero. Begin by installing Nero onto the machine that’s running PEBuilder, as if you planned to run Nero locally on that machine. When the installation completes, copy all of the files from C:\Program Files\ahead\Nero to C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom\files. In this particular case, the nero burning rom folder is the folder that has been set aside for the Nero application. The Files sub folder is intended to store Nero’s system files.

Now, you must take care of Nero’s registry entries. To do so, go to the C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom folder and open the PENERO.INF file using Notepad. As I explained earlier, the INF file in an application’s folder is used to store the application’s registry entries. For Nero and all of the other applications that PEBuilder predefines, the INF file is pre-configured. You just have to make a few changes that are specific to your system.

In this particular case, the PENERO.INF file is designed to support both Nero versions 5.x and 6.x. Initially, the lines for both versions are commented out. You must therefore determine which version you have and then remove the semi colon from the beginning of the lines that apply to that version. If you look at Figure D, you can see how the two versions are separated.

Figure D

An application’s registry entries are stored in an INF file.

Once you uncomment the appropriate lines, just replace “Your Name”, “Your Company Name” and “Your Serial Number” with your name, your company’s name, and your Nero product key. Save the file, and your set to go. The next time that you click the Build button, Nero will be included in the build.

Putting XP in your pocket

Running Windows from a flash drive isn’t an exact science. Sometimes the process just doesn’t work and there is no good reason why. As more PCs start to support booting from USB devices though, USB boots should become more standardized, and the technique should become more reliable.