Customizing Win XP Live CD

Creating plug-ins for programs and getting the Win XP look and feel 

Saturday, May 08, 2004

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In our last issue, we discussed how you can create a Win XP live CD from a licensed copy of Win XP using a free tool called Bart's PE-Builder v3 (Creating your Own Win XP Live CD, page 44, PCQuest, April 2004). But, that live CD gives a non-XP look and feel-it comes with an NU2 wallpaper and NU Start button (but, no Menu bar). 

If you want, though, you can change each of these. The most important, of course, is adding programs and tools that you want. We will show you how to add a data-recovery tool in the Win XP live CD to recover data from a deleted partition. 

The steps required to add any program will be the same as the ones we will use to add the data-recovery tool. Also, you can have any wallpaper that you want-be it any default Windows wallpaper or even an image that you have on your hard disk.

The example that we will use in our article shows how to get the familiar Win XP wallpaper (the one with the rolling meadows). 

You can also change the NU Start button to the standard Win XP Start button and Menu bar. But, remember that any customization can be done only while creating your live CD; once it has been made you will have to be content with what you get. 

Create plug-ins for programs
Let's see how to create and add plug-ins for programs to your Win XP live CD. To illustrate, we'll create and add a plug-in for a disaster-recovery tool. The data-recovery tool has two files; one is an executable file (abc.exe) and the other is DLL file (xyz.dll). Copy both the files in any folder (let's say recovery folder) and then create an .inf file (say, datarecover.inf) in this folder. This file helps to install the above-mentioned files to the desired location.

Win XP live CD has a run XP look and feel

To create a .inf file, write the following commands in a Notepad file.

; datarecovery.inf
; PE Builder v3 plug-in INF file
[Version]
Signature= “$Windows NT$”
[PEBuilder]
Name=”Data Recovery Tool”
Enable=1
[WinntDirectories]
a=”Programs\ datarecovery “, 2
[SourceDisksFiles]
abc.exe =a,,1
xyz.dll=a,,1
[Software.AddReg]
;Add to Start Menu\Programs
0x2,”Sherpya\XPEinit\Programs”,”Dat aRecovery Tool”, “%SystemDrive%\Programs\ datarecovery \abc.exe” 

Note that 'Sherpya\XPEinit\' associates other plug-in tools with XPE plug-in. To add the plug-in, save the file and copy the entire folder in the plug-in folder, which is found in pebuilder\Plug-in. Now, when you run pebuilder.exe, you will find the data-recovery tool plug-in that you just created in the plug-in list window. 

To incorporate this plug-in into your live CD, enable the plug-in and create an ISO image of the Win XP live CD.

Get any wallpaper 
Changing the wallpaper of your live CD is a matter of simple renaming. For example, to get the rolling meadows look, copy bliss.bmp from the c:\windows folder of any Win XP machine to a safe location. Then, rename this file to nu2.bmp and copy it to the folder where you have pebuilder.exe. That's all that is required. 

Get the Win XP Start button and Menu bar
For this, you need to use plug-ins for the Start button and Menu bar (xpe.cab). You can take them from our this month's PCQ Essential CD.

Win XP live CD after customization, with the familiar calling windows look and feel

Double click on pebuilder.exe, click on Next, give the path of your installer CD and then click on Next again. Now, you will get a plug-in list. Here, when you click on the Add button, it will open a window where you have to give the path of the .cab file (xpe.cab). 

Give the xpe.cab with the full path (given on this month's PCQ Essential CD). 

After adding it, check whether the XPE plug-in is enabled or disabled. If it is disabled then click on the Enable/Disable button to include it in the live CD. 

Now, to create the live CD with the Win XP look and feel, start by clicking on Next. 

In the dialog box that opens, you will see an 'Output directory' text box. Give the path of any folder name (where PE-Builder will copy the content of live CD), which can be named as output folder. 

Now, tick the 'Create ISO Image' option and give the path and ISO file name to be created and click on Next . This will start creating the content for the live CD in the Output folder. 

If the content is created successfully, it will also automatically create an ISO Image. 

Finally, you can burn the ISO image with Nero. 

After booting from the live CD you will get the Win XP default Start button and Menu bar instead of the NU menu.

Sanjay Majumder

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