13 Aug 2019, 12:35 am
Windows Preinstallation Environment systems are something which have grabbed my attention of late. I think the basic installation disk from which you install Windows probably counts as one of these, as do some early, rather rudimentary 'rescue and repair' type bootable systems based on systems like XP and Windows 7.
What I'm really referring to in this thread though are some more recent PEs that are pretty sophisticated, with a huge range of software included in the package, and which act more like portable Windows operating systems on a dvd or usb drive. In actual fact, you can't write data to these devices, save files or permanently install programs etc, so they maybe have more in common with certain 'live' Linux distros.
Examples of these are:
Windows 10 Kyhi PE. https://win10.guru/toolkit-item-kyhis-rescue-disk/
Gandalf PE (Windows 7 and Windows 1o versions). https://youtu.be/M8hP3tmDtSg
Bob Omb Win 10 PE. https://www.aioboot.com/en/bob-ombs-mod ... in10pex64/
But the one which fascinates me the most is the Sergei Strelec PE, which comes in a range of versions. The screenshot below is from a 32-bit Windows 8 based version on dvd, running on a 10 year old laptop which was designed for Windows Vista. The number of programs visible on the desktop represents maybe just 5% of the total contained on the disk - for technical reasons the screen capture utility wouldn't let me grab a shot of any of the menus:
What bothers me a bit is the fact that this originates from Russia. The search engine supplied with the version of the Opera browser here is even in the Russian language. Are there perhaps security risks here, or am I being paranoid? The disk also uses a feature called 'MInstall', which is flagged up in some quarters as malware, it seems.
In addition, I sometimes use a Russian-developed VPN browser extension called 'Browsec', which has worked where other VPNs have failed, but I've read potentially alarming things about this as well.
EDIT: found a YouTube clip which is very informative:
