New EWF + MinLogon and CF instructions - Page 16

jonessc · 02-13-2008, 07:08 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by RedGTiVR6

I've run into a number of random issues in the past. Certain programs don't know to look to the system account for information, they are looking elsewhere.

Thanks Red.

Anyone else have any experience using it as well?

accordvsick · 02-21-2008, 02:52 PM

I installed my first carPC last week and am looking for some tweaks. I am going to try minlogon tonight.....but I am still uncertain as to what EWF is. So far all the tutorials i have looked seem to have EWF being geared towards the user who plans to boot XP off of their solid state defice like a compact flash. I am still booting my XP off of a IDE drive and plan on keep doing so. So will having configuring for EWF apply to me or benefit me?

jonessc · 02-21-2008, 03:50 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by accordvsick

I installed my first carPC last week and am looking for some tweaks. I am going to try minlogon tonight.....but I am still uncertain as to what EWF is. So far all the tutorials i have looked seem to have EWF being geared towards the user who plans to boot XP off of their solid state defice like a compact flash. I am still booting my XP off of a IDE drive and plan on keep doing so. So will having configuring for EWF apply to me or benefit me?

In simple terms its like write protecting your hard drive, the computer will carry on as it would normally,it will allow files to be renamed, deleted etc as normal. as soon as you reboot/turnoff everything will still be as it was before EWF was enabled. Everything gets written to the ram as opposed to the harddrive, so changes in essence will be lost as soon as it switches off.

accordvsick · 02-21-2008, 06:19 PM

Thanks for the reply jonessc.

So in a nutshell....each time I turn off my computer and reboot it i will restart to the same state as before EWF was enabled.

Ok I understand now.

EWF is useful if I plan to use HORM.

Therefore decreasing boot times.

Ok After reading Granturings blog I am going to attempt minlogon ewf and finally HORM this weekend. Just curious before I do this...what are the hardware requirements? I don't need a CF card right? Also, I have my M2-ATX powersupply set to shut off my computer after 15 seconds (cut power to the board).......is this ok? The reason I do this is because I do not want to cause excess drain on my battery since I frequently park my car at the airport for 2+ days.

Thanks

jonessc · 02-21-2008, 07:03 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by accordvsick

Thanks for the reply jonessc.

So in a nutshell....each time I turn off my computer and reboot it i will restart to the same state as before EWF was enabled.

If this is the case....what would be the benefit? I am not sure I see one unless it allows me to do some cool things by enabling this feature that I wouldn't be able to do with it disabled.

It will boot normally, but whateva you changed/modified/deleted will all be as it was before you delete a file, empty the recycle bin, on reboot it will all be as it was. The benefit would be for example you could just switch your computer off, without having to shutdown (mainly used in a cf/solid state drive) minimal risk on corrupting files/settings cos nothing gets saved until you disable. You get everything as you want, enable it, and it will always be that way...

accordvsick · 02-21-2008, 09:32 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by jonessc

It will boot normally, but whateva you changed/modified/deleted will all be as it was before you delete a file, empty the recycle bin, on reboot it will all be as it was. The benefit would be for example you could just switch your computer off, without having to shutdown (mainly used in a cf/solid state drive) minimal risk on corrupting files/settings cos nothing gets saved until you disable. You get everything as you want, enable it, and it will always be that way...

jonessc....i see that you wrote the directions in your blog.

And you replied to my last post just as i was editing it.

Is it required that i have a second hard drive to do this?

Can I just have a single hard drive and have a seperate partition for the data? This is the setup I am running now. I have windows on a 40 gig partition and 280 gigs on a data partition.

SFiorito · 02-21-2008, 11:56 PM

you don't need a second drive, just another partition for your media since it will be written to. otherwise you'd have to worry about disabling EWF before copying new media over. if you have a writable drive then you can easily add music to it without worrying about the EWF memory layer taking up all your RAM.

there's one issue though....if you plan on using HORM you may want to consider getting a USB drive you can unplug before creating your hibernation state. Microsoft recommends doing this to flush out the write cache for the media drive. Otherwise the write cache will be persisted with the HORM state and be present every time you boot up, possibly corrupting your drive.

accordvsick · 02-22-2008, 02:01 PM

ok i followed directions from http://granturing.blogspot.com/ for setting u minlogon.
Here is what I have done so far....I copied minlogon.exe to the system32 directory and renamed it winlogon.exe.

I then proceeded to try to modify the registry.

I navigated to:

Next modify the registry on the XP system by changing the "Config" value in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon key to be 0x17

using regedit.

I got to the \winlogon but could not find anything called "config"

Am I supposed to create it?

Anyway I created it and gave it a value of 0x17. Rebooted the computer and now it goes to the XP loading splash screen and just reboots. keeps doing also in safe mode.

did i do something wrong and what can i do to fix this?

jonessc · 02-22-2008, 02:42 PM

Did you rename the old winlogon to winlogon.exe.bak?

If you have WFP enabled, theres a good chance windows has just replaced the new version, with the older version...

Kimota · 02-22-2008, 03:15 PM

Hi Accordsick,

Did you keep a copy of the orginal winlogon? If so probably the easiest way is to remove the hard drive from your CarPC and add it as a slave to another PC if you have one. Then paste the orginal winlogon file in C:\WINDOWS\system32

You also mentioned you modified the registry but could not find config. Did you manually do this using regedit or did you create a .reg file as mentioned on http://granturing.blogspot.com/.

If not what you should do is create the .reg file simply open notepad and copy the text listed on http://granturing.blogspot.com/ save the text file then rename it for .txt to .reg. Once that is done double click the file and all the entries will be added to the registry.

P.S

when you rename the orginal winlogon and minlogon file I'd suggest you do it in safemode as its easer to get around windows file protection this way.

nasa · 03-01-2008, 01:55 PM

Hi,

Thought I would take on a weekend project and install WinXP on to a 2Gig Compact Flash drive. I followed the instructions from the top of this thread and have my harddrive singing a long with ewf. So I cleared a 150x Ridata card I had around, which is formated as FAT32, and pulled out a ide-cf adapter. Formatted drive, ran the bootprep, and copied the files over. During bootup, BIOS see's the CF as a hard drive (sectors and all) -- but would fail to find an OS. If I booted into BartPE, it couldn't see the CF drive at all.

So I am looking for some hints here -- and would greatly apprecate the help.

angel120 · 04-10-2008, 03:16 AM

I, like accordvsick, followed granturing's instructions to the T. However, there was no mention of writing a .reg file, that I could see. So now, my carPC just goes into infinite loops. Swapping the drive and restoring the original winlogon.exe is no problem, but what are the instructions for the .reg file? What do I name it, and what do I write?

SFiorito · 04-10-2008, 06:05 AM

You don't need a REG file for MinLogon since there's only one setting to change. Take a look at step 6 here http://granturing.blogspot.com/2006/...-minlogon.html

angel120 · 04-10-2008, 11:07 AM

When I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, I couldn't find anything that had "config" in the name, so I skipped that step. Now when I boot up, it simply goes into infinite loops. What am I supposed to do in step 6?

EDIT: Found it.
Post #1, step 3; http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winn....html#cooliris

Quote:

Create a file called minlogon.reg and using notepad copy the following text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Config"=dword:00000017

colin · 04-12-2008, 12:46 PM

Hi guys,

Im having a bit of a problem with EWF. I have a hard drive that is 250 gigs and I want about 220 gigs to be unprotected.
I tried using SDI disks but they wont let me go over 75 gigs. I tried programatically "dismounting" a partition of 220 gigs but then it wont even hibernate. Anyone have any ideas?