MaximumPC 2005 11

PASSWORDS: A BLESSING

OR A CURSE?

I work in a computer store selling

laptops. A disgruntled customer

set a hard drive password on one

of our laptops, so I can’t access

its contents. Is there an easy way

to fix this? Can this feature be

disabled to prevent future occur-

rences, yet still allow other cus-

tomers to examine our laptops?

—Bob Parlinari

The hard drive lock is there for

a reason, and it appears to be

doing its job, as it’s not allowing

you to access the drive’s con-

tents. If the Doctor told you how

to bypass it, he’d be aiding and

abetting laptop thieves nation-

wide. There’s also the small mat-

ter of how the Doc doesn’t think

it’s possible to sidestep a hard

drive password.

The password is stored

in the drive’s firmware, so

reformatting the drive won’t

erase it; plugging the drive into

another machine won’t work,

either. If you can’t guess what

the secret word is, your only

real solution is to obtain the

password from the customer,

boot the machine, and then

reset it. The only surefire way

to prevent this from happen-

ing to other machines in your

inventory is to remove their

batteries and secure their

power supplies behind the

counter, so the machines can’t

be powered up without your

permission. Once you explain

to your customers the reason

for your caution, they’ll likely

appreciate the tight security

this feature provides.

PE Builder also gives you the option

of adding plugins developed by Bart

himself or clever third parties. These

run the gauntlet from ASPI layers

to disk utilities, Ad-Aware to mouse

drivers, and they’ll all be automatically

added to your compilation (you can

fi nd scads of them at http://www.nu2.nu/

pebuilder/#plugins). Now click Build and

kick back. When PE Builder is done,

you’ll have a fresh, bootable CD-ROM

(unless you chose to make a disc

image instead—all you have to do is

burn this image to a disc with any

disc-mastering program).

Ask the Doctor

Diagnosing and curing

your PC problems

NOVEMBER 2005 MA XIMUMPC 55

Continued on next pageË

All you have to do to enable support for Nero within BartPE is

copy the application files and edit the penero.inf file in the Nero

section of the BartPE plugin directory.

The final step is to burn your disc image to a

CD. Select Disc-at-once recording, and if you’re

worried about compatibility with other PCs, notch

down the burn speed to 8x or 16x.

 Bake your boot disc

5 Fun with BartPE

For the real go-getters out there, creating a

BartPE ISO image is only the beginning. You

can fi nd a list of the plugins included in the

BartPE download at the BartPE site, as well as

links to other plugins available from third parties

(including commercial software developers).

Here are two must-haves for a bootable

“rescue” CD that won’t leave you in the lurch

after a disaster.

NERO

Your fi rst priority on a wobbly system will most

likely be evacuating your data. If you don’t

have an external drive to copy everything

onto, you’ll need to burn it to CD or DVD

instead. BartPE conveniently comes with a

plugin for Nero built in, but in order to use it

you’ll need to copy all the fi les from your Nero

install (everything within the Nero application

folder) into the plugin\nero burning rom\fi les

directory of your BartPE

plugin folder. Then open

the penero.inf fi le in the

Nero plugin folder using

Notepad. Look for the

line that says [Software.

AddReg] underneath

your version of Nero

(5.x or 6.x). Note that

this line and the three

beneath it are preceded

by a semicolon and

some spaces; remove

the semicolon and the

spaces before all four

lines, and edit the last

three lines to refl ect the

user name, company,

and serial number from

your Nero installation. Save the penero.inf fi le,

and Nero will be available from the BartPE CD

you created.

NORTON GHOST/ACRONIS

TRUE IMAGE

Both of these drive-imaging programs are

supported by BartPE. In fact, Acronis makes

it grossly easy by supplying its own plugin

for True Image, available at http://www.acronis.

com/homecomputing/support/bartpe. Splicing in

Ghost isn’t much more diffi cult; just copy the

following fi les from your Ghost install: ghost32.

exe, ghostexp.exe, ghostsrv.exe, ghostcdr.

dll, and then copy them to the plugin\ghost8

directory in your BartPE plugin folder (even

though it refers to Ghost 8, this directory works

just fi ne for later versions).